Prime Attitude
by CRose
Summary: This is the end of the second Arc of PA, Ranma meets the moste interesting people and an enemy returns for revenge
1. A Pawn

Notes - Here's the first chapter in new story, it's been inspired by several fics that have tried to cross with the X-men, That seemed kind of restricting to me so I crossed this one with the whole Marvel Universe. I plan to have Ranma meet a good number of the various groups and people of the universe as I go along.   
  
Let me know what you think ^_^  
  
New Web Site - http://shi_hanna.tripod.com/  
  
**********  
Prime Attitude  
Chapter 00  
Cory D. Rose  
ertle2@msn.com  
(c) 2002  
**********  
  
Ranma sighed and cleared his throat as he stood up and opened the book:  
  
"Hmm...'Throughout time and space there has always been one precedent that reigned over all the others, this is Balance. For every evil deed committed, there is an equal and opposite amount of good deeds performed as well. This is the way it has always been and the way it will always be as the ages pass. This applies to all the different types of realities that exist as well, if an intelligent being can imagine something, it will exist in one reality somewhere no matter how dark or silly the actions were that created it in the first place. This is the power of the ultimate force of creation, the power to bring about the impossible.'  
  
'With nothing but the force of the will any being in the multiverse can create another world, it's that easy. This doesn't mean that they can interact with it in any kind of physical sense, but they can watch in their minds eye, they can predict the possible outcomes of its people, and gain the potential to forge it into a full time world that will survive the ages it takes for a reality to gain a life of it's own. This is how this small story came into existence, why it was penned down and why I believe it will eventually outshine all the other stories in existence for it comes from the my mind, my soul, and my heart. Nothing else is needed to bring it about...'"  
  
**********  
  
"That's enough Ranma." Hinako snapped and glared at Ranma as he closed the odd book he'd been reading from.  
  
"Yes Miss. Hinako." Ranma said.  
  
"Since when can you read English like that Ranma? You never pay attention in class."  
  
Ranma shrugged and sat down. "It's not that hard."  
  
"...but where did you learn, you've never shown you even knew how to read English."  
  
"I've passed the last three tests Miss Hinako." Ranma pointed out casually.  
  
Miss Hinako, in child form, stomped and glared at him some more before stepping up to the chalk board and quickly writing something out.  
  
Ranma ignored her and leaned back in his chair and acted bored, he was so tired of going through this crap day in and day out with no end to it.  
  
From her desk next to Ranma, Akane glared at her fiancée and wondered what he was up to now. She had been struggling though the book Hinako had brought in that morning, no one had ever heard of the thing before and the name was simply impossible to pronounce and Ranma had rattled it off as it wasn't anything difficult. Her eyes narrowed as he pretended not to notice her and sat there as if he was bored again, no matter how much time she spent with him there were times when she just couldn't understand him and it got on her nerves. What was it about this jerk that kept her from just giving him to the other girls and being relieved of the responsibility of this engagement?  
  
Akane snorted and looked back to the odd book on her desk, she knew the truth, but didn't want to admit it even to herself.  
  
Ranma glanced at her and kept his opinion to himself as he listened to Hinako drone on some more, he still wondered why teachers stood in front of classes and did everything in their power to bore the students into learning. The tone of their voices never changed unless something weird happened or Hinako found something to divert her attention, but that second option was always dangerous. The girl tended to obsess on things like discipline and handed it out in her own unique way whenever and as many times as she could with that aura draining technique of hers. He glanced at the chalk board where Hinako had written something down and nearly groans as he notices that she has written down one thing, something about chocolate, and is talking about how important it is to match words with deeds. This was why he had so much trouble paying attention to the various teachers, on top of being as boring as they could, most of them weren't that good at teaching.  
  
The bell rang and the class was dismissed, he packed up his homework and headed out of the room as quickly as he could. As usual Akane made it a point to leave with her friends and leave without him, when at school she tried to ignore him as much as possible while getting mad at him for doing the same. He would never understand her reasoning, it was just to hard to understand her at times. Ever since that damned wedding she had been doing everything in her power to show that he wasn't wanted around as well, that more than anything had driven a wedge between then, but he still tried for honors sake to salvage their relationship.   
  
He sighed as he made his way down the hall and headed for the front doors of the school. Ukyo and Shampoo had accomplished that much when they blew things up, Akane didn't like him anymore and it showed in her every action lately, her mallet was on a hair trigger and he'd been forced to hide the buckets so that Akane didn't drench him with ice water in the mornings anymore. He spotted the one person in the whole school he didn't even want to talk to anymore, Nabiki, the one he blamed for the whole mess blowing up in the first place and hadn't even accepted responsibility for her actions or all the pain and distrust she had caused. Ranma wondered at times if she would ever realize what her actions were doing to her life, even he understood that she was walking a treacherous path. One day she would end up like his old man if she wasn't careful, every day her conscience became just a tiny bit smaller. Eventually she would piss off the wrong person and the pay back would be far worse than she could ever realize.  
  
He walked out of school and saw that Akane had headed home without him, she was in the distance walking with Yuka, this was a new occurrence and he wondered if it was the beginning of some kind of retaliation. Stopping for a second he figured if he went home he would just be leaving within a few minutes as Akane took her misplaced anger out on him with a surprise attack with the mallet, that was getting old too, it had happened to many times. Instead he decided to give her the space she wanted for once, she didn't want him around so he wouldn't be around. He jumped up on top of a nearby roof and used the rooftops to head to one of the local parks, this too had become a habit lately and even his old man had noticed that he wasn't around all that much anymore. The workout that morning had been more brutal than it normally was when his old man had pulled out all the stops in one of his normal attempts to make him do his bidding.  
  
Ranma recalled leaving him embedded in the side of the dojo unconscious, it was the third time this month that he'd had to do this and even Kasumi was getting mad at him for all the damage to the house. She didn't say it in so many words, no, she had started to allow Akane to make his lunch in the mornings. The first one had literally exploded into flames the instant the air tight seal on the package had been removed, it took two days for the burns on his hands to go away and Akane had never apologized for it. According to her and her friends he had brought it on himself and deserved it for all the 'pain' he had caused to others. Akane had raved about this French dish she had stumbled across in Kasumi's recipe library, he wasn't all the surprised that she would mess the thing up and still get the flame portion of the thing right. Everything after that had been a little less destructive, but they had been just as inedible as that charred mass that survived the first lunch.   
  
With barely any sound at all Ranma launched himself off a roof, over a wall, and landed on a bit of grass and looked around cautiously. He noticed something strange over by the lake as the light breeze created waves and distortion upon the water's surface. There was a storm coming, he could feel it and knew that it would mean another of his many changes into Ranko, he had gotten to the point the he could ignore the transformation, but he still hated it more than anything else in his life. Not ten seconds later he sighs as lightning flashes in the sky and one of Nerima's unpredictable storms soaks him through in a matter of seconds. His hair goes red and she has breasts again, oh joy, she's not a man any more. She waits a few minutes for the rain to stop before she shakes her head to dislodge the water in her hair.  
  
"Like I need this." She muttered to herself and had to restrain herself from lashing out at a nearby tree in her anger. She hated her curse, there were days when she wondered if Seppuku wouldn't be all that bad.  
  
**********  
  
The man shaped being known as Galactus was huge, almost three hundred feet tall and decked out in a blue and purple battle armor that he never took off. Upon his head was a helmed crown with spikes rising out from where the ears would have been like a pair of boomerangs, these alone were nearly a thirty feet long from top to bottom and they gleamed brightly in the strange blue light that was cascading around him from the large view screen he was standing in front of. His mind was not that of a mortal, but of a god, he was an aspect of destruction and death that had to consume entire planets to survive and appease his insatiable hunger, even if those planets were inhabited. Living beings meant nothing to Galactus, the meant as little to him as a bug did to most humans. Few beings alive had ever met the great murderer and of those, all were of incredible power, for he was a true god.  
  
Galactus stood on the bridge of his ship, a moon sized machine that he used to destroy and eat the planets the he consumed. Surprisingly he wasn't here to eat a planet, he was here to witness a rare event and take advantage of it, something that had only happened once since the big bang itself. Galactus was old, he was a being that was rumored to be older than this universe and considering this would be the third time he witnessed something like this, it had to be true. Galactus cared nothing for things like good and evil, to him they were a waste of time, his only purpose was to consume planets to stave off his incredible galactic sized hunger for a planets bioenergy. He did what was necessary to survive and nothing more, pray for any one that got in his way though, they rarely survived the encounter. Rarely had he been prevented from eating a planet and when it did occur it was usually because the beings on it were intelligent enough to fight him off.   
  
This of course had nothing to with what he was here to witness, but he was constantly drawn back to his rare failures, it was the nature of his being. Like this event, there had only been three times that he'd actually failed and they were such rare things that he tried to ignore them, and when that was impossible he would learn from them. That was why he was here now, to learn from a mistake he had made ages ago before the stars had become old. He stared out the screen that framed what looked like a blue star of incredible proportions, but this was anything but that, it was a tiny fragment of the energy left over from collapse of a rare celectial event. What made these rare was that the conditions had to be just so for something like this to form, a shard of pure ethereal cosmic matter.   
  
He was here to eat it.  
  
It would give him several years of relief from the constant hunger, it's power was unimaginable to a lower mind, but as a god he could comprehend it easily and knew that it would bring about a whole new level of power for him and allow him to move up to the next level. This blue shard of cosmic energy was larger than his ship and a thousand times brighter than any sun, he had been traveling towards it for several months now at high warp, but even after all that time he was only just now getting close to it, but he would be there shortly and he would feed on the solidified cosmic energy. Even now the energy of the star was assuaging his hunger as his ship absorbed the blue energy radiating from it, soon his hunger would be gone.  
  
Then as his ship was pulling into a low orbit around the shard his pure white eyes narrowed, a memory was surfacing at the back of his mind. From long, long ago from when he wasn't Galactus, but a mortal being known as simply Galen, he concentrated on it but it was older than time itself and just out of reach. He rarely thought about the times when he hadn't been Galactus the World Destroyer, it was so long ago he couldn't even recall what his name would have been, just something he had abandoned during the great collapse. With the press of a button Galactus forgot about the memory and trudged on, he had to get rid of the hunger that drove him even if it was only for a short while.   
  
City sized tentacles dropped out of the bottom of Galactus' ship and started sucking up the energy around the shard of power, it's bright blue color almost too bright for even Mighty Galactus to tolerate, but he ignored it in favor of his mission. This shard, to understand a bit of it's size was larger than a planet but so bright that it filled a whole star system with bright blue light. It would have been considered one of the wonders of the universe if anyone had ever visited this location, but Galactus was the first and once he was gone it wouldn't exist anymore. He reached out a giant finger and tapped another button on console in front of him and frowned at what his instruments were telling him.   
  
"Hmm...oops." Galactus said, it was something his ex-herald had used upon occasion during their centuries of wandering. He had heard Nova, another of his heralds use it as well when they were in a bad situation.   
  
The memory he had tried to ignore was in the for front of his mind now and he recalled what was so dangerous about a shard like this. He didn't budge as the shard shrank down suddenly, he didn't blink as all that light started to grow even brighter as it was drawn in, he didn't budge as his control board shorted out, and didn't so much as move a finger as the shard seemed to explode outward to engulf his ship. It imploded around him and the energies from his own ship mixed with those of the shard and increased it's power enough to rip a hole in reality itself. Galactus' ship exploded in a giant ball of cosmic power that just added to the collapse of the blue shard, this combined to send out a wave of cosmic destruction like a ripple on a pond of water, but this one was spreading out in all directions. The billion lives this would cost meant nothing to Galactus, but as he went up with his ship he wondered what the future would bring and if it would be worth the effort.   
  
He wouldn't die from this, oh no, Galactus is a god and as such can only be removed from existence for a short while. The power of Galactus was awesome and impossible for a mortal to comprehend, within a short time he would be back and have to continue on to his next meal. He wouldn't think about this set back, but add it to the list of mistakes he's made and make sure he didn't do it again. One thing he would wonder about though was what the full effect of the shard would be when the hole he had just created into several different universes finally closed. Only time would tell, but for the moment he was still trying to pull himself back together so he had other things on his mind.  
  
**********  
  
"Well that ruins any plans I had." Ranma mutters as she moves over to a tree and hops up onto a branch, the leaves are thick enough that she doesn't get her clothes dirty. Grabbing a book out of her bag, she had hung it from a nearby branch, she starts flipping through it. One page flipped every four or five seconds until she gets though the book then grabs another one and does the same thing. Due to the insane amount of fights that occurred around her day in and day out Ranma had been forced to learn some skills that would allow her to take care of a great deal of things at once, the faster the better. Or in this case, adapt some already known skills to different uses, using the Amagurican to speed read was a bit of a stretch, but it allowed her to take care of school and still be able to keep an out for any and all attacking morons might wander her way.  
  
Akane still hadn't figured out how he was able to pass all his tests in class with C's and B's on tests, she was to busy blaming him for everything that went wrong with her world view. Ranma sometimes wondered if Akane had the brains of a carrot, at times it seemed like she was quite smart, but when it had anything to with him she absolutely refused to give him even the smallest chance. Instead all she did was look for anything that might even hint that the was doing something odd and use it reinforce her odd view of the world. Reading through several Psychology books had been quite insightful and dull, luckily it had only taken about an hour with his new technique, no one had even noticed he was gone, he still had to fight to stay awake though.  
  
She had been trying to get herself more educated ever since her mother insisted on it, but with all her enemies things had been kind of hard. Training with the old man hadn't gotten any easier since he knew how she fought and when he did go all out the old fart was pretty good. Still, he detested an educated mind for some reason, especially when he realized that she had started to play little games with him. Her mom had pointed out several books that detailed things Ranma had never heard of before, at least things that were written down. Genma had tried to teach them to her through training, but left out explanations for why a good number of them were used. He had always wanted her to act without thought, not avoid a fight by thinking on it to much and lose the advantage.  
  
Thunder rumbled in the distance and Ranma sighed, there were days when she wondered if the universe was out to get her for something she didn't remember doing. She sent her senses out to see when the rain would arrive, at first it appeared that the storm was about five minutes away, but then her eyes snapped open as she suddenly sensed something big happening all around her. Ranma looked around frantically when the hair on her head started to spark with static electricity, and saw the tree was starting to spark with it as well. She gasped as it rolled over her body and left a strange tingle behind, it was almost pleasant, but she ignored this as she dropped her chemistry book to the ground and forgot about it, something was telling her to leave the area before it was to late.   
  
Then before she could even put action to thought, it happened, her mind exploded into fire and Ranma screamed unlike she ever had before. She fell out of the tree and landed on her side in the wet grass with a loud squelch, but this was barely heard over the roar of lightning as it continued to flow from the trees all around her, from the ground all around the tree, and even fall out of a clear sky as every bit of it seemed to focus in on her as she writhed in pain. All she knew was that she was in pain and that it was more than she ever experienced before, even worse than the time Cologne had used pain inducing points in an attempt to make her marry Shampoo. Even the Neko-Ken wasn't this painful. Eventually she was able to force her mind to work around the pain and she had to use every ounce of will power she had to staggered to her feet as it rushed through her without mercy, there was blood dribbling from her ears and nose as she forced herself to work through the pain. It hadn't stopped, instead it seemed to level out at just the point of agony, but not enough to stop her. Ten years of training to control her body allowed her to force herself to do what was needed and not surrender to the pain.   
  
It took everything she had, but she managed after a few seconds to use her Ki to reduce the pain by about half, but it still felt like someone was using an ice pick to divide her brain into tiny little slices. Then it stared to travel down her nerve endings, she moaned in pain and tried to shake it off, but it only made it worse as she fell to her knees. Something inside her twisted and surged like a raging flood and she fell over as the pain intensified a thousand fold, blood started flowing out of her eyes even as she diverted more and more Ki to battle the problem. Whatever it was she knew this was a bad sign, what little thought she could devote to it suggested that this was an attack of some kind, but she didn't have a clue what it was.  
  
Her aura exploded outward as she tapped everything she had, it shattered the ground around her body and shattered the tree she fell out of into a pile of broken kindling. This wasn't even noticed as Ranma scrambled around on the ground and screamed as her aura flared up even more as she collapsed with a groan of agony. Her aura, a bright blue, turned to a bright white and condensed around her body in a kind of cocoon of energy. This energy started to sparkle and spark with electricity in multiple colors, then all of this flared one last time and lit up the entire park with white light. The light was bright enough to nearly blind everyone one in a ten mile radius, to be spotted from satellites in space and alerted a number of people that something was happening in Japan. Then as quickly it happened the flash of light vanished before anyone could do more than pinpoint that it was in Tokyo somewhere.   
  
**********  
  
When Ranma came to, she noticed two things, the first was that she wasn't in the park anymore and that the pain was gone. The second was that she had no clue where she was, opening her eyes didn't seem to work either since there wasn't enough light around her to see things. Sitting up proved to be a bad idea as it caused her to gasp in pain, it felt as if every muscle in her body had been shredded and stitched back together. This kind of pain was different than what she had felt earlier though, it was almost a relief to feel this kind since it couldn't even compare to that agony. She didn't think anything would come close to ever matching that and didn't even want to think about anything that could.   
  
A look within was all she needed to figure out that her Ki reserves were nearly drained and completely inaccessible for a while yet, with her life it didn't even come a surprise really. Nothing ever came easy and she always had to fight for even the slightest bit of good luck, it had to a family curse or something, if it was bad news or and angry weirdo, they always came after her for some strange reason. Gritting her teeth she lifted her hands and started feeling her body to see if there was any damage she didn't know about. From the feel of things she was laid out on a bed of some kind, someone had taken her clothes and tossed a sheet over her, she'd take care of the pervert later. Pulling this back didn't help her with her sight though, it was still dark and a quick feel of her face revealed why as she traced the blood tracks that flowed from her eyes.  
  
A memory of something one of her teachers had said about pain came back to her, something to with people who had been tortured going blind. She seemed to have busted something inside her eyes and it would take a while to repair itself before she could see again, her eyes were useless at the moment and with her Ki all but drained it would be a while yet. Her head started to pound as she moved around, but she ignored the increasing pain and hoped this wasn't a permanent thing. Things like that could wait until she had figured out what was going on and where she was. The old man had taken the time to teach her how to fight without the use of her eyes so she knew how to move around in total darkness, but without the use her Ki things were going to be a lot harder to do.  
  
She grit her teeth as she slowly sat up, her self inspection showed that she didn't really have any external injuries, and let out a loud groan of pain for the effort, then had to spend a few moments gasping for air before feeling along her legs to see if they were injured. Everything seemed to be in working order, so she carefully moved them off the edge of the bed and let them hang. To her surprise this lessoned the amount of pain that was bothering her, but it picked back up as her feet met the floor. Listening with all she had she tried to read the room and was a bit shocked to find that there wasn't any sound to hear, it was completely silent. No beeping, no horns in the background, no one walking along the some hallway nearby, nothing but perfect silence. Where in the hell was she, even at Tofu's clinic she could usually hear nearby traffic and people working out in their yards?  
  
"This is all I need, I have no clue where I am and it looks like I have to do this the slow way. Oh yay." She muttered as she slid off the bed and attempted to stand, every inch of her body felt like someone had just decided to rip her up again and she couldn't suppress a yell of agony as she fell to the floor. This had one interesting effect though, she heard a low level beep just as she screamed, but moving seemed to be out of the question at the moment. Then she heard a door open and close some distance away, some foot steps that eventually seemed to be heading for her. Ranma considered trying to hide, but being blind and in far too much pain to move made that an impossibility. It didn't stop her from trying though.  
  
The foot steps stopped nearby and another door opened, there was a rush of air that lasted about ten seconds, then the opening of another door. "Now you shouldn't be out of bed, Red. You've suffered major trauma to over eighty percent of your body. Most of it is just bruising though." Said a kindly voice, Ranma could hear a bit of surprise mixed in there though.  
  
"I can't see anything..." Ranma slurred out.  
  
"What was that..." The kind voice said.  
  
"Can't see..."  
  
"Your eyes are healing nicely, but we haven't had a chance to look at them yet."  
  
"What happened?" Ranma gasped out as he picked her up gently and lay her out on the bed again.  
  
"We're not quite sure what happened to you Red."  
  
"R-Ranma..." Ranma gasped out, her tongue wasn't working right and it was getting harder to concentrate.  
  
"Hmm?" The voice said and draped the sheet over her again.   
  
"My name is Ranma." Ranma got out.  
  
"Well then Ranma, my name is Dr. Henry J. McCoy."  
  
Ranma nodded, glad to be in the hands of a Doctor but something about her senses were trying to tell her that there was something odd about the guy. "My Ki is out of whack Doc, is there some way you can help me with that so I can heal faster? I'm almost completely drained." Ranma's throat was raw after saying all that and didn't think he could get much more out, he started to cough.  
  
"What's Ki?" Henry said as he placed something on the girl's head.  
  
'Oh yeah.' Ranma thought to himself, there aren't very many people that know about that stuff. "Contact Dr. Tofu Ono in Nerima, Japan..."   
  
McCoy memorized the name, he didn't recognized it so it wasn't anyone that dealt in his specialized areas or wasn't all that well known. He finished applying the sedative patch to the girl and watched as she was quickly fell asleep, he started hooking up some of the special equipment in the room and to monitor her as she slept. The variances of the human drive to survive even the worst trauma never failed to amaze him, the girl was almost healing before his eyes, though nothing like Logan's healing ability. What surprised him even more was the fact that she had been clinically dead not even an hour before, or at least that's what his initial analysis of her had been. He strapped her down to make sure she wouldn't roll off the medical bed if they had to do tight flying, lord knew it hadn't happened before.  
  
He was kind of relived that she was still blind though, she probably wouldn't have cooperated like she did if she had been able to see. Setting up an IV drip to get some fluids back into her system he stepped over to the door, they were currently on the Blackbird flying over the Pacific Ocean. He had a lot to think about, the biggest thing was whether or not to contact the people in Japan that had given him the girl's body. The authorities had retrieved it from the crater that she had left of that park, he had been in the area and lent a hand to those people that needed medical attention. Whatever she had done hadn't registered on his scanners as mutant abilities though, the signature had been familiar, but he'd have to look it up in his computes at the mansion when they landed. He was also cursing himself for not taking the time to check her over more thoroughly than he had, this mess could have been prevented, luckily she seemed to be quite resilient to damage.   
  
A few seconds later he made his way back into the main seating area of the Blackbird where Storm was flying the plane. They had both been in Japan visiting some friends and taking care of a little business when this happened, Storm was visiting Yuriko while he was meeting with a colleague that had come across a bit of interesting research about some of the families that lived in Japan and bred a mutant ability into their children. It seemed they had been doing so for the last several generations, some of the different types had been very interesting. Though there were a couple of families that seemed to have gone completely insane over the years, these were the most common among the specialized breeding programs they used. It had been a fascinating file of information and allowed Charles to expand his database of Mutants a bit more, who knew when the knowledge would come in handy.  
  
"What happened back there?" Storm asked.  
  
"Our corpse just woke up and screamed in pain."  
  
"I thought her heart had stopped?"   
  
" It had, but it started up again."  
  
"So she is a mutant?"  
  
"According to the computers that I just hooked her up to she doesn't even have a mutant gene in her body. She's pure human, though she has a muscle and skeletal development that rivals an Olympic athlete and that takes years of special training to accomplish."  
  
"How can she wake up like that if her heart had stopped?"  
  
"I'm not sure, I either made a mistake when I examined her or she has something about her that we haven't encountered before."  
  
"Did she say anything?"  
  
"Her name is Ranma and she asked about something called Ki."  
  
"Ki? Like Chi?"  
  
"I'm not sure, but she gave me the name of a Dr. Tofu Ono to contact about it just as I was sedating her for the rest of the trip."  
  
"Curious, but it will take a lot more than this to surprise me. I'll contact Charles and let him know we need the med lab ready when we land." Storm said.  
  
"I'm going to try and find something on this Doctor that Ranma mentioned."  
  
"Alright."  
  
**********  
  
Ranma opened his eyes to find himself floating in some kind of fog, there was nothing but white background for as far as he could see. As he looked around himself he noted that his pain was gone and let off a massive sigh of relief, then remembered where he was and looked around a bit more. He had on his normal clothes too, but they felt odd for some reason and chalked one more thing up on the board with all the strange things he had been exposed to lately. "What in the hell is going on here?"   
  
A dark blue arm seemed to reach out of the white fog and grasped his neck before he could even think to defend himself. It was a huge hand and bulging muscles that traveled up the arm as it constricted to cut off his air supply. He gagged and pounded his fists on the arm, but it didn't budge, instead he seemed to be pulled out of the fog and into a metal room of some kind. There was monster attached to the other end of the arm, but it was humanoid, about seven foot tall or so and looked like someone had chiseled this guy from a block of rock. The thing was even wearing this golden armor. Even his face had little crags in it along his chin, he was grinding his teeth together and there were small bits of energy wafting from his eyes as he continued to chock him.  
  
"I've got you now little mortal spy..." The thing's voice growled out and sent a chill down Ranma's spine, the sound dripped of pure evil. Ranma had no clue how he knew this, just that he was starting to black out and his mind was making all kinds of connections.  
  
Using the thing's rock like arm as leverage he focused some of his waning strength and kicked the thing in the throat hard enough to break something. It didn't do a thing, but the monster slammed him against the floor a couple of times and grinned down at him, then it's hands loosened just a tiny amount as the thing threw him across the room like a simple doll. Ranma, his face black from lack of air, couldn't even twist his body around in time to take advantage of the situation as the metal crumpled around his body and he slid to the floor. He tried to make his body respond, but it just wouldn't work as he watched the thing calmly walk over to where he was laid out.  
  
"Your pathetic skills are nothing compared to mine mortal and I'll teach you to try and spy on me again." The monster held up his hand and it flared with a huge amount of energy that nearly blew Ranma off the floor. The thing's hate filled eyes seemed fill with anticipation as it was about to kill him, it's lips curled back in an evil smirk of glee as the energy around it's hand grew in strength.   
  
He grit his teeth and tried to come up with a plan of attack, but drew a complete blank as he lay there in a heap. He had no idea how he had ended up here and he didn't know if he had time to draw in enough Ki to fire off a large blast of Ki, his reserves were to small as it was, doing so now could kill him if he wasn't careful. Something about the monster's power drew his eye though and studied it for a moment, the monster just stood there as if was waiting for him to make the first move. The energy flowing around the thing's arm was a golden white with small balls of energy swirling around on the verge of exploding, he could feel the heat generated by the stuff even several feet away. Even stranger, he could feel the energy clawing at something inside of him as if wanted to devour him into nothingness.   
  
"I will fight you until I destroy you monster." Ranma groaned out and tried to get up, but his body had taken too much damage.  
  
"I should just crush you like a bug you pathetic weakling, how you managed this..." The thing growled out, but stopped as Ranma vanished in a swirl of energy. "Interesting..."  
  
Ranma was surprised to find himself standing at the entrance to a valley full of flowers, he was standing on some kind of over look. There were a dozen or so people down below that were just laying in the grass and enjoying the day, then he noticed that his body was back to normal once more, all his injures gone. He glanced around and spotted someone watching him curiously, the man was quite strong, but about half the size of the monster he had just fought. This guy had golden skin and a thick mane of hair that covered his eyes, he was wearing a black body suit and a red and gold cloak that gave him a look of contained violence. Ranma had seen enough men like this to recognize a man who had seen way too much battle during his life, to much death and destruction.  
  
"Um...Hello, I'm..." Ranma started.  
  
"You are not supposed to be here, go back to the real world before you are trapped here permanently mortal." The man said in a cold and emotionless voice. A beam of green light shot from his forehead just as Ranma noticed the small gem that was stuck there.  
  
Ranma tried to dodge, but it hit him before he could even move and instantly found himself back in the white fog like place again. He grit his teeth in frustration, whatever was going on was starting to piss him off now. He had spent years training to be one of the best fighters in the world and after the fight with Saffron he had earned that right, now he was being thrust into a situation where all his skill seemed to be completely useless. He growled in frustration as he clenched his fists and reached deep within himself to tap his Ki, brought his hands up and fired a massive blast of energy into the sky around him with a scream of anger.   
  
The blast was a bright blue/white color and over ten feet wide as it fired out of his hands, but he didn't noticed this. What caught his attention was that he had just pulled off a blast that would have carved a hole in the moon with ease, he relaxed and let the energy sail up into the white sky and vanish from site. He could barely feel the drain on his reduced energy reserves of Ki, whatever it had been, it sure as hell hadn't been Ki because that still felt out of whack. He relaxed a little and pulled himself into a sitting position and started looking deep within his mind for answers, where in the hell had that energy came from? And why was he having so much trouble controlling his emotions suddenly?  
  
**********  
  
The blackbird was flying high above the west coast when and alarm went off, Henry raised an eyebrow and tapped the button that was flashing. It brought up a bit of bad news, the girl was giving off some kind energy and it was building up to dangerous levels inside the small sickbay where she had been placed. "Storm, there's a problem with the girl. I'm going to go and check it out."  
  
"Alright, be careful, who knows what she could be capable of right now."  
  
"I know." Henry said as he got up and walked out of the large cockpit area, with the girl sedated he thought she would be safe and trouble free, but something was up and he had a bad feeling about this one. He was just opening the door that led to a short hallway when it happened, there was a scream from inside the plane as a wave of blue energy suddenly rushed down the small hallway and blew him off his feet. He heard the tearing of metal and the sky above the plane turned a bright blue as it lit up the night sky all around him.   
  
"BEAST!!" Storm yelled as she struggled to control the plane as alarms went off all across the board. The Blackbird wobbled like an injured bird and nearly fell out of the sky as Strom used all her skill to keep that from happening. She could feel the sudden decompression of the cabin that told her that there was now a large hole in outer hull of the plane. Reaching out to tap several buttons on the board in front of her she managed to activate the emergency controls to stabilize the plane. Storm sighed as the Blackbird settled down a bit and turned her head to see that Beast was laid out on the floor behind her. He was struggling to get up, but there was no way she could help him and control the plane at the same time. Storm just hoped he would be alright since there was no one there to help them. She glanced back and saw that he had small gash in his head from where he had hit the floor when the energy blast's back wash had filled the room. It had even managed to crack several of the cabin windows and they were made to be resistant to high amounts of damage.  
  
'Storm, is everything alright?' Professor Xavier asked through their telepathic link.  
  
'Yes Professor, we seem to have lost a bit of the plane though.' Storm though back.  
  
'Do you need help?'  
  
'I think that would be advisable sir, Beast is injured and our guest will need some help as well.'  
  
'Rogue can reach you in just a few minutes.'  
  
'Alright.' Storm thought as Professor Xavier's presence left her mind, she turned to look behind her. "Beast? Are you alright?"  
  
"Yeah, just caught me by surprise. What the hell happened now?"  
  
"We lost pressure when that blast wave moved through the cabin, the computer is showing a large hole in the top of the hull, right above the sickbay area."  
  
"A...Hole?" Henry asked in surprise as he pulled himself into a chair and rubbed his head, there was a lack of decent air in the cabin, but their plane was designed to take just about any kind of damage and survive so he wasn't to worried. He pulled open a small space below the chair and took out a couple of breath masks as Storm struggled to get control of the plane, he noticed that hey had lost quite a bit of speed and altitude.  
  
"Go check on that girl, the Professor just contacted me and knows the situation, Rogue is on her way to give us a hand. Some of the controls aren't working right and we almost fell out of the sky because of it, but I've got the emergency controls activated, but the plane is still sluggish and hard to control."  
  
Henry nodded and staggered to his feet, braced himself and used his skills to make his way to sickbay. He calculated that Rogue would make her flight in a matter of minutes, they had only been about 600 miles from home and when she poured on the speed she could go incredibly fast, he hoped she made it in time to lend them a hand. The computer had already been compensating for things when he left, just it was programmed to do, so he figured most of the damage had to be to the hull of the blackbird itself and it seemed as if most of the redundant systems were still working at least. Boeing International had nothing on the X-men for R & D safety devices, the Shi'ar could make space craft, they had no problems helping them build a plane like the Blackbird.  
  
As he got closer to sickbay he was amazed to see that the coloring of the walls was discolored, and even a bit warped and shredded the closer he got. The airtight door that had separated the bay from the rest of the plane didn't even exist anymore as he wadded his way through the destruction, being careful not to upset things, he wondered if it had been sucked out of the hole and if so, where it had landed. Once past this he got his first look at the hole, it was about fifteen feet wide and clearly showed that the something had fired through it from this side. He looked around and noticed that the girl wasn't anywhere to be seen, for a second he thought she had been sucked out of the hole when things depressurized like that. Then he spotted her crumpled up in the corner, the bed was wrapped around her and pinning her in place.  
  
The wind was beginning to get to him as he stood there and it got worse as he tried to get to her, they were still moving at four hundred miles an hour or so. Moving slowly and making sure his hand holds were secure he finally reached her, the bed was embedded into the floor holding her in place and protecting her from the wind. Her head was lolled to the side and a deep cut on her scalp was bleed freely, he had to get it treated and move her to the main cabin to keep an eye on her now that the bay was completely destroyed. Whatever she had done didn't seem to have affected her, but he figured it had been on par with something Cyclops or Havoc could fire out on a good day. It wasn't an easy thing to blow a hole in the outer skin of the blackbird, the whole thing had systems and devices in it from other planets to make it more effective.  
  
"Fascinating!!"   
  
He would worry about permanent injuries later, she seemed to be in good enough condition and getting her out of here had to be done before something else happened. Grabbing the bed he braced himself and ripped it from the floor, dropped it and picked the girl up, she had lost her sheet in the explosion so she was naked, but he ignored that as he slowly moved out of the room. The tone of the wind changed as he was stepping into the hallway so he turned around just in time to see Rogue drop through the hole and make her way over to him. She had a worried look on her face, but that changed as she got a good look at the naked girl in his arms.  
  
"She the one that did this?" Rogue asked with a raised eyebrow. She was wearing one of her usual outfits, a skintight green and yellow body suit, yellow gloves, and a leather jacket. "The Professor said you all might need a'bit more help with her if it happened again."  
  
"We should make it back to the mansion, but Storm figured it would be a good idea if you were around just incase there's more damage than meets the eye." Henry said as they moved to enter the cockpit.  
  
"What kind of mutant power does she have?" Rogue asked as she looked the girl over, she silently wondered where it was that all the women they ran into that had powers seemed to be drop dead gorgeous and really 'healthy', then put it out of her mind.  
  
"She isn't one, the tests show that she is pure human with no sign of a mutant gene anywhere in her body.  
  
"...and she blew ah'hole in the top of the blackbird all by herself?" Rogue explained and took a closer look at Ranma. "Amazing, but you have to take care of something first."  
  
"What's that?" Henry asked, he thought had everything under control.  
  
"Some clothes."   
  
"We don't have any, the sheet I had her covered with was sucked out of the plane when she fired that blast.  
  
"There should be some left in the bay right, in one of the lockers?"  
  
"Well yes..." Beast started, but Rogue was already walking out of the cockpit.  
  
"I'll be back in a second, I just had another idea and it will be easier to reach." He moved to sit the girl down in one of the chairs as Rogue returned with one of the packages from the storage bins where they kept there extra equipment. "Here we go, this should work out just fine and it will be better than a sheet."  
  
Beast took a closer look and grinned, they kept extra uniforms on board for when they needed them in an emergency. There were copies on board of all their costumes, old and new alike, though Storm tended to have more than the others. She was always changing costumes when the old one got worn out or out dated, she was a fashion horse at times. This time Rogue had grabbed one of her costumes, a green and black one that she rarely wore. Beast helped as Rogue trussed her up in the baggy thing, sealed the back, and hit a button on the belt. Like a space suit, it quickly melded to her body and within seconds was as skin tight as all of Rogue's clothing, there were even gloves, boots, and a black leather jacket for her to wear.  
  
"How's the plane feel to you Storm?" Rogue asked as they finished up, sat the girl in a chair, and strapped her in.  
  
"It's a bit sluggish, but it seems to be doing okay so far. We're about forty minutes from the mansion right now, I think it'll hold together so long as nothing happens to cause us even more damage."  
  
"A'right, let me know the instant something goes wrong." Rogue said as she pulled a wet towel out of a nearby med kit, she couldn't count the number of times she had been slimed or dunked in some kind of gunk that had to be wiped off. She used this to wipe the blood off of Ranma's face, as Beast checked her eyes, the whites around her eyes were red and the iris' were unresponsive to the his probing. "What's wrong with her?"  
  
"Some kind of torture, she had her eyes squeezed shut so tightly to block out the pain that her eyes hemorrhaged and started to bleed. She even damaged her teeth a little because of it, but she's healing at a faster rate than a normal human so I think her mysterious power has something to with it."  
  
"Other than the blast, what kind of power does she have available to her."  
  
"We don't know, the bay computer wasn't able to figure out what it was, but initial scans showed something familiar, but it was something we don't encounter very often. What I need as at my main lab at the mansion, that blast she shot off was incredibly powerful and I need to do some research on it to figure out what it was."  
  
"What do you know about it?"  
  
"It was bright blue." Storm called out, the plane was flying a bit better now that she had gotten used to the immense drag the hole in the hull was creating. Fancy flying was out, but she figured they would be able to get back to the mansion without to many problems.  
  
"Bright blue? Ah bet that was a sight considering it's so late at night."  
  
"We don't know where the beam went, but from the looks of things it might have lit up the whole region for a few seconds."   
  
"Incredible, her power must be fantastic."  
  
"True, but with the limited results from the blackbird's computer I still haven't been able to figure out what she can do or even what she is." Beast said, he was a bit disgusted that the computes were barely functional.  
  
"Well there isn't much we can do now, so lets be patient and wait until we land to do anything else." Storm said. "The plane is running a bit differently because of the damage, Beast, could you man the other seat please and keep an eye on things for me?"  
  
Beast sighed. "Of course." He knew when he was being distracted, but moved over to the copilots seat anyway and sat down. He started to adjust the various dials and reading through the damage reports, there was a lot more than he had suspected, but nothing really major that they had to worry about and with the three of them there they could handle just about any emergency that did.  
  
**********  
  
Ranma wasn't sure when she made the transition from deep sleep to waking, but she did know that something had changed. She wasn't sure what it was, but something about her surroundings was making her ill at ease. Keeping her eyes closed she tried to access her Ki again, but it was still quite low and her look inward hadn't revealed much anything either. Just that her body seemed to have been altered in some way, but she had been unable to pinpoint where or even what this change was. Now that she was awake she took stock of her situation again, just like last time and found that she was dressed in something odd, had on a coat, and her eyes were still messed up. Though they were filtering in a bit of light as she moved her head, she could make out the light and dark areas around her.  
  
Whatever she was wearing it was like a plastic skin, she wasn't sure what it was, but it reminded her of something that she had only ever seen on girls in magazines. She also noticed that the bed she was in seemed to be a normal one with a mattress and sheets instead of that padded one from before. Her headache was still there too, though it had decreased quite a bit and movement didn't seem to affect the thing like last time. Sitting up was easier as well, so she pulled herself into a sitting position and carefully pulled her legs in. Surprisingly her odd clothing wasn't restricting her in the least, it was like she was completely nude, but covered. Being blind like this was a pain in the ass, but she had dealt with something like this before when the old man's teaching methods had gotten out of control.  
  
With a growl Ranma remembered that she still had to pop him one for that little incident too, the greedy bastard. She started to get out of the bed to explore the room when the door opened, cocking her head to the side she could hear the ruffle of clothing and the smell of...damp hair? "Who might you be?"  
  
"It's Dr. McCoy again, how are you feeling?" Beast said and adjusted his glasses, he was wearing one of his lab coats and had a clipboard in his hand.   
  
"I'm feeling a bit better, the pain isn't as intense as it was and my eyesight is beginning to come back."  
  
"Excellent. Do you know what happened to you now that you are feeling a bit better?"  
  
"Not really, I was in a tree when I was hit with this overwhelming pain, it felt like someone had decided to inject molten lead into my body from all the angles. I do remember lots of lightning though."  
  
"You did have quite a bit of damage when I found you, but it's healed up quite a bit since then. Anything else?"  
  
"My Ki is out of whack, but I told you that all ready." Ranma snapped.  
  
"I'm still unclear on what that is, do you mean Chi or a bodies life force energy?" Beast asked.  
  
"Yeah, it can also be called Chi, but I've always just called it Ki since all the Masters that I know seem to call it that."  
  
"Good, good, we tried to contact that doctor you told me about, but his phone seems to be unlisted. Do you know of anyway to contact him?"  
  
Ranma shook her head. "I've never had to dial his phone number, it's on the speed dial at the Tendo's place and when we need to go see him his practice is also just down the street from their house so we just walked there."  
  
"Tendo? Is this your family?"  
  
Ranma laughed a little. "Naw, Saotome is my family name, Ranma Saotome." She almost blurted out that she was engaged to one of the girls that lived there, but remembered at the last second that she was in female form at the moment.  
  
"I have an odd question for you, if you don't mind?"  
  
Ranma shrugged.  
  
"Are you a Mutant?"  
  
This time Ranma cocked her head to the side in confusion. "What's a mutant?"  
  
"What?!!" Beast yelled in shock.  
  
"What's a Mutant, I've never hear the term before." Ranma said.  
  
"Everyone knows what a Mutant is, they are all over the planet in one form or another." Beast got out.  
  
"Sorry, I've never heard of one before this, but considering I've been on a ten year training trip with my old man my whole life and just recently settled down at the Tendo's place I might not have ever had a chance to encounter one before. We did stick to the back woods and less known areas for most of the trip."  
  
"A mutant is a human with an extra gene, it's different for every person that has one, sometimes this gene doesn't activate and a person is able to lead a normal life. Most of the time they mutate in some way, taking on odd forms or gain powers of some kind..."  
  
Ranma snorted and crossed her arms. "That's ridiculous, even I would have heard of such a thing in school if they were like that."  
  
"Mutant activity is known world wide, I've never hear of it not being taught in school though." Beast said.  
  
Ranma shrugged. "It doesn't matter, they can't be that common if I didn't run into one during the two years I've spent at the Tendo's place..." She trailed off as she recalled Saffron and his claims at godhood. Could that have been a mutant that didn't know any better? Ranma wasn't sure, but Saffron had been the leader of the Phoenix for centuries according to him.  
  
"Do you recall something?" Beast asked.  
  
"Saffron."  
  
"Who is that?"  
  
She frowned now and Beast raised an eyebrow, to him it was like she let her emotions out all at once. Everything she felt seemed to be mirrored on her face, she had to be quite innocent for her emotions to be that open. "Saffron is this guy that kidnapped my fia...a friend of mine and came very close to killing her."  
  
"He had powers?"  
  
"He was a Phoenix, he threw around fire balls the size of houses and had enough arrogance to get on anyone's nerves. He used my friend as a pawn in his bid to gain even more power, I ended up fighting him to get to a cure that would keep my friend from dieing. I had to kill him to do it too, I was almost too late at the end." Ranma said, trailing off into silence at the end of her explanation.  
  
"You killed him? When he could throw around fireballs the size of a house?" Beast gasped out.  
  
Ranma nodded. "I had to push my Ki to it's fullest extent in that fight just to survive, even then I would have lost if I hadn't messed up his ascension from a powerful man into his full Phoenix form."  
  
"Where was this?"  
  
"Somewhere in China, in this hidden valley about two hundred miles from the coast." Ranma said as a thought occurred to her. "Why were you asking about these mutants anyway?"  
  
"You've been displaying some odd abilities over the last thirty six hours, when you were handed over to me you were extremely injured and on the verge of death."  
  
"What?! I've never been that hurt in my life and the only person that's ever come close was Saffron..."  
  
"Let me finish, now then, we needed to get you to a place that could treat you and that meant a plane ride."  
  
"A plane?"  
  
"Yes, a good sized one too. That was where you first woke up and we had our talk, I sedated you since moving around was reopening your internal wounds. A little while after that you did something that blasted a hole in the upper section of the hull right above you and nearly took the plane with you."  
  
A flash of his temper tantrum while meditating came back and Ranma froze in shock as she began to understand that her actions there had happened in real life as well. "I remember..."  
  
Beast looked up in surprise. "Remember what?"  
  
"I was floating around in this hazy fog, it must have had something to with putting me to sleep. I jumped around to a couple of places and ended up in a fight with this huge blue guy that looked like he was made out of rock. Then this other guy with gold skin and red eyes blasted me and tossed me away like a useless toy, I was mad and in pain, so I fired off a blast to let off some steam while in that fog like place. Instead of the blast I usually put out, this thing was big and powerful enough to light up the sky." Ranma muttered.  
  
"A dream induced blast of energy? This is an incredibly stupid thing to do and places a lot of people at risk." Beast said as he considered transferring her into a meta human suppression room to keep the rest of the team safe.  
  
Ranma shook her head. "I've never done anything like that before, the dream wasn't like a normal one, I was aware of it somehow. It was like I was there."  
  
Noting some things down on the clipboard, Beast thought about telling Ranma about his findings. They had been at the mansion for several hours now and he'd had a chance to use his specialized equipment on the girl, he had a pretty good idea what had happened to her, but no really easy way to do so. He decided to wait until she had recovered her sight before telling her, she would need to see the differences of this world from her own. Jumping dimensions was kind of common in their line of work and he had learned what to look for, the girl wouldn't believe him unless she had proof.  
  
"You might have been, things like that have happened to me and several people I know over the years."  
  
"I've never heard of anything like it in my life."  
  
"Well with what you described a little while ago I'm not surprised."  
  
"Humph." Ranma muttered, she didn't like being in this form and wanted a hot bath to change back.  
  
"Would you mind talking to a friend of mind?"  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Charles Xavier, he wanted to talk to you about what you did in the plane." Beast asked, hiding the fact that they were currently in the underground lab underneath the mansion, that she wasn't even in a hospital like he had implied, and that his friend was probably one of the most powerful telepaths on the planet.  
  
"Sure, anything to pass the time while I heal. Though at some point today I want to go outside and put in a bit of practice."  
  
"Sure that can be arranged, are you alright doing it with your eyes like this?"  
  
"Oh sure, the old man used to have me do this blindfolded once or twice a week to force me to get my fighting skills down perfectly." Ranma said with a shrug.  
  
"What kind of training were you given?" Asked a voice just as Ranma heard a low level hum of a machine entering the room.  
  
"You're Xavier?"  
  
"Yes, what kind of training did your father give you?"  
  
"Ten years of being taught one of the most deadly styles in existence, Anything Goes Marital Arts."  
  
"Why is it so dangerous?"  
  
Ranma grinned. "Very few people have the ability to learn it because it incorporates the best moves of the other arts and adapts them into the Anything Goes style. It makes us unpredictable and gives us the advantage in any battle, I've actually beaten several fighters that had lots more skill than me because they couldn't adapt to my style as quickly as I did theirs."  
  
Charles Xavier looked a bit surprised, then did a light surface scan of her thoughts as she described one fight she had with a guy named Herb he could tell that she was hiding something and looked a little deeper in case she was a danger to them, he was a bit confused when as he noticed that all the memories she mentioned showed her as a man. Then he stumbled across some thoughts about Jusenkyo and the curse, he nearly fell out of his hover chair, but dignity and respect of the girl's privacy kept him from doing so. Next to his hover chair Beast smiled and wondered what had shocked his old friend like this, it was pretty hard to that, but it usually happened when they brought in a new mutant or student that he just couldn't handle. Jubilee was a prime example, like the day she got the Charles to use his powers to force his legs to work and taught him how to use a pair of roller blades. Beast briefly wondered if this Ranma might have the same effect on his old friend as Jubilee did.  
  
Xavier composed himself and ignored the smirk that Beast was giving him, he decided to keep the fact that he was mutant from Ranma. He wasn't to sure he could trust her and her memories were a little odd, one of the things he did notice was that the girl really had never encountered a real mutant before. He could have probably dug deeper into her mind for more information, but she would have noticed something like that, her mental skills were quite developed from her years of martial arts training.   
  
When the Blackbird had landed they had brought the girl into the underground lab and ran some deeper scans on her and come up with some very surprising readings. The biggest one was that she really wasn't a mutant, Henry had been convinced that his scanners on the plane were broken when they failed to pick up anything on her as a mutant or something else. The scanners here had found why this was happening, the girl was producing a kind of energy field around her body that was slowly growing in strength. The energy field had disrupted the scanner, showing nothing but a blank screen, until Henry had recalibrated it for special test subjects and filtered out the interference.  
  
Several facts had become instantly clear, she was in incredible shape, her entire body was slowly growing more and more dense as the hours passed. Henry figured that it would taper out in a few months and leave her weighing several hundred pounds and quite possiblly a very defined muscular development. This would lead to an incredible increase in strength, invulnerability, and reflexes that were lightning quick. Henry had been surprised to find that these were already quite high already and attributed it to her martial arts training, he shuddered to think what she would be able to do when the transformation stopped. An attempt to block the energy had shorted out their equipment, frying parts that had never been designed to withstand that level of power.  
  
This Ranma was also from another dimension, they were positive of that now, they had records on Longshot, Mojo, Spiral, and a few others that were also able to cross the dimensional barriers and the readings were nearly identical, but just enough to know that she was from a dimension other than the one they came from. The energy field around her was also a clue, it seemed to be emanating from an unknown location, so it was quite possible that it was from her home dimension. It would take time to track down though, the stuff was hard to read, its effects were obvious, but the energy itself just didn't want to register on their scanners. It would take them a few weeks to figure out what it was, so until them he had decided to let the girl stay, let her adapt to her new powers, and get her used to this new world.  
  
"That's quite amazing Ranma, that sounds like some of the fights some of the local mutants have gotten in over the years, though they were a lot more destructive." Charles said.  
  
"I usually try to keep the property damage down when I fight, but most of my opponents don't even bother. One guy, Ryoga Hibiki could care less, I've seen him topple trees, shatter walls, roads, and even cars to get at me. It's a pain sometimes since I tend to get blamed for everything that gets broken, no matter who did the damage it's always blamed on me."  
  
Professor Xavier chuckled at the tired sound in the girl's voice even as he saw some more flashes of memory as they flashed across her mind. "That tends to happen at times, but you don't have to worry about that kind of thing while you're here, we tend to have lots of damage around her as well and we know who to blame for it."  
  
"Well alright, hopefully nothing will show up to cause problems. Things like that tend to follow me around as well."  
  
"Not to worry Ranma, we can handle pretty much anything it if tries to attack us."  
  
"How?"   
  
"You're at the X-men's base of operations."  
  
"X-who? Sounds like a bunch of exotic dancers if you ask me, pops used to hire these girls while we were on the road, they all had weird names..."  
  
"Nothing like that girl, they're a group of mutants using their powers to help the world." Xavier said with pride.  
  
Ranma snorted. "I've never met anyone that didn't use their special abilities to profit in one way or another."  
  
"You don't believe me?" Xavier asked, for some reason he couldn't get past the girl's surface thoughts anymore and even those were barely detectible.  
  
"How am I supposed to tell you anything when I can't see and someone in this room keeps wrapping my head in a blanket of Ki?" Ranma snapped and glared at Xavier, he blinked in surprise and for once didn't know what to say. "I can feel a couple dozen high level Ki users in this house even with my Ki not working like it should, some are playing, some are practicing, and some aren't even using their Ki. It's weird, I've never met so many Ki users in one place before, even the Amazons were careful to keep their Ki users isolated from those that could do them any harm and to use them as secret weapons when the time was right." Ranma shook her head and wiped the excess hair out of her eyes.  
  
"I don't understand, what is a Ki user? None of the people in this house can use their Ki in anyway..."  
  
"Charles, she might be reading the team members, they do tend to stand out and since she has never encountered a mutant before she might be getting them mixed up, seeing them as only she understands." Beast said and noted a few more thing down on his clip board. "Can you tell where they are right now Ranma?"  
  
"Sure." Ranma shrugged.  
  
"Where is the strongest?"  
  
Ranma cocked her head as if using her ears to 'see' and turned to look at a wall. "That way, there is a large power source of some kind, but it's muted as if someone had contained it with something...there is a second one there who has a really weird Ki signature, female and a depressed out look on life, she has a dark aura of depression around her and it's affecting her Ki in some strange way."  
  
"Can you tell who they are?" Xavier asked, he had a good idea who Ranma was talking about. The Danger room was in that direction, Cyclops and Rogue were in there working on a new program that Jean had created over the weekend.  
  
"I don't know, the girl is familiar for some reason, but I don't know why."  
  
"Cyclops and Rogue are currently working out in our training facility, Cyclops has the ability to fire force beams of pure energy out of his eyes. He might be your contained force, he has a very dangerous power, if he wasn't careful and ever forgot to wear a pair of special glasses to keep the beams in check he would destroy every thing he looked at."  
  
Ranma nodded. "That sounds about right, I've never heard of anyone with that level of Ki ability being unable to control it though, he could level a good sized house with one blast."  
  
"None of the team members use Ki as you term it Ranma, they are mutants that are training to use their powers."  
  
"This doesn't make any sense to me, having these powers, the way you're describing them make them seem like they have no control over then and that having them is something bad. How can skills like this be bad?"  
  
"They can be at times Ranma, I'm a mutant and I my powers are a little hard to deal with as well." Beast said.  
  
"You're a mutant?" Ranma asked as she turned her head towards Beast.  
  
Henry blinked as he felt a force of energy wash over him and he saw Ranma's eyes start to sparkle a bright blue. "What are you doing?"  
  
"Reading your aura. Your aura is odd, as if your body wasn't quite human. I've seen something like this before, though it wasn't quite a easy to 'see' as this was, you seem to be descended from a primate of some kind, lots of hair, and a pair of...fake glasses?" Ranma asked.  
  
Xavier chuckled at the odd look on Beast's face as she mentioned the glasses.   
  
"Um...well, my mutant gene has given me increased abilities, I'm an exceptional acrobat and can can use my feet like hands if I want, I have increased strength and...blue fur."  
  
Ranma raised an eyebrow. "Blue fur? Why blue? Did you dye it that color?"  
  
"No, that's just the way my mutant gene made me."  
  
"Weird, never seen anything like that before, but after you've seen a man cursed with the Niuhoomanmaoorenniichuan curse, blue fur is tame."  
  
"Niuhoomanmaoorenniichuan?" Beast asked as he tried to translate the odd word in his head.  
  
Xavier was still trying to figure out how the girl was blocking him when she wasn't using mental shields like he usually encountered among the other telepaths, it was as if her mind had just stopped allowing him access. He'd never encountered anything like this before, using force would probably allow him to get a decent reading, but it would damage her mind and quite possibly turn her into a vegitable if he tried.   
  
"The Niuhoomanmaoorenniichuan means 'Spring of Drowned Yeti Riding Bull Carrying Crane and Eel. The guy that fell in that turns into this winged minatar thing, bad breath and a worse attitude, I've had to fight him several times in the past." Ranma muttered. "He later added some octopus tentacles just to be more effective, he's royal pain in the ass."  
  
"We've seen some similar things over the years." Xavier said, he'd figure out how she was doing this, he didn't like to be blocked and he still wasn't sure she was a threat to his team or not. "Now we've got some facts to tell you that you probably won't like, hopefully we can work together on this."  
  
"Shoot." Ranma said and relaxed a little.  
  
"One of the things we have been able to figure out about you is that you seem to have come from a different dimension..."  
  
Now it was Ranma's turn to be confused. "Another dimension? Anything like time travel magic?"  
  
"It's similar, do you know the theory on alternate universes that they teach in school?" Beast started.  
  
"Sorta, my school wasn't exactly known for being a top center of learning, they usually had their hands full just keeping teachers around, getting them to actually teach was a little hard." Ranma smirked.  
  
"Well moving between dimensions is usually a matter of power, sometimes magical and sometimes something more. The X-men can do it, but we use high levels of technology to go where we want and usually only when we have to because it's so dangerous. All of your damage and injuries are because you jumped dimensions and the process nearly killed you, I'm not even sure you didn't die for a few seconds before coming back to life here. The men that found you and called us for help didn't know what to do with you..." Beast said sadly, only adding a little white lie to keep Ranma from freaking out completely.  
  
"No offence, but with my life almost nothing much surprises me anymore..." Ranma started, but Xavier interrupted her.  
  
"Would you tell us about your curse Ranma?"  
  
"What curse?!" Beast asked, just a little shocked that he had missed something.  
  
"You know about that?!" Ranma gasped.  
  
"Yes, though I'm not sure what it is, just that your cursed."  
  
Ranma sighed. "I don't like to talk about it."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Of everything that has happened in my life, my curse has been the one thing that has ruined it the most. Almost all of my problems stem from the time I got my curse, all of it can be connected to it on one form or another. There are days that it nearly drives me to despair and others when I just can't find it within myself to take the time to change back." Depressed, Ranma turned away from them and stared blindly at her feet.  
  
"What's the nature of your curse Ranma?" Beast asked.   
  
"I got off lucky, a victim of the Niuhoomanmaoorenniichuan changes into a powerful monster, I've seen a guy that turns into a little black pig, a girl that can turn into a cat with light purple fur, even my good for nothing father can turn into a panda. Me, I'm a man that changes into a girl with the simple application of cold water, hot water will change me back into a guy."  
  
"So were looking at your cursed form now?" Beast asked as he made more notes, at least her mannerisms made more sense now, the way she phrased her words and even the way she was sitting made more sense.  
  
Ranma nodded. "I don't normally tell anyone unless I have to, but since you were being truthful with me..."  
  
"Understood."   
  
"What else did you find out?"  
  
"Your body seems to be generating a strange form of energy, were not sure what it is doing exactly, but it's changing you in someway."  
  
"How?"  
  
"Your body is getting denser and denser, this will make you stronger, invulnerable to damage, and several other things that are hard to predict at the moment. We do know you can fire blasts of energy, you blew a hole in the plane with it after all. It's going to take us weeks to get that repaired too."  
  
Looking within herself, Ranma thought about McCoy's words, they sounded like she had gained some kind of power that she didn't know about or the move between dimension had given her more power. That didn't sit to well with her, a free power up was a good thing, but she had no idea what had happened to cause this, that meant she had no way to conrol this power or what it was for and that was bad. With her Ki, most moves were hard to do at first, but as time went along she slowly gained more and more control over her internal energies. "Could this power you're reading be my Ki, maybe it was given a boost of some kind as I came across the dimensions?"  
  
"I really don't know, I've never been able to take readings on real Ki before, just the after affects of things that were similar."  
  
"My Ki has been a bit messed up since I got here, really weak actually, I was thinking that the move might have increased them beyond my normal levels of control and I was just having problems grasping very much of it." Ranma's stomach suddenly growled, loudly, she blushed and laughed nervously. "Um...anything to eat?"  
  
"We can come up with something." Charles said as he moved his hover chair out of the room. "We'll be back in a few minutes. If you don't mind I'd like to see this curse in action, maybe we can do something to help you control it?"  
  
"Alright." Ranma nodded, Cologne had offered something similar once and like a fool she had accepted and come within a hairs breadth of ending up in China again for even trusting her. Ranma would bide her time for now and go along with them until they proved themselves as liars.  
  
After they were gone she relaxed and descended into a deep meditation trance and went deeper into her mind than she had in some time, she had to see if what they were saying as true. Her father frowned upon most meditation techniques because he thought they were just and excuse to make person grow soft, that was why he had started making her meditate on her head. Ranma only ever did that when her old man was around though, she had once come across this old priest that had taken her in while the old man was sleeping off a three day binge. She still got a laugh out of that, it had taken him over a month after that to track her down.  
  
That priest had taught her a good number of things, the biggest was that the old man had done everything in his power to make her into a willing slave to his wishes. This was just a few months before they ended up Jusenkyo so she hadn't had a chance to do much with the things he taught her and after falling in that damned spring and going to Japan she had been forced to work on these things when no one was around. These techniques had been what allowed her to tap her Ki in the first place, Ryoga and his Shi Shi Hokudan had forced her to move her plans up a little, but luckily no one knew that she had already been experimenting with projecting her Ki. It had been the only way she could survive that mess in Nerima and still be as sane as she was, by pretending to be something else. Luckily she hadn't had to pretend to be something unbelievable, just more ignorant than what some would expect, all that time on the road had given her ample time to perfect the idiot jock personality.  
  
Now it wasn't working right and she would be dead if she didn't find a way to fix it, she had only been around these guys a little while, but they had done a couple of things that made her distrust them. The Xavier guy was dangerous, he was one of these mutants that McCoy had mentioned and quite powerful, his Ki seemed to blaze around his body, filling the room. Blocking his attempts to enter her mind had been pretty hard, but she had done so by submerging a portion of her conscience deep inside her mind. When she did this it had opened up something inside her that she hadn't been aware of, that was what she was looking for now. To see what it was and if it might be the cause of her strange predicament, eventually she found herself deep within her mind and noticed something a little different.   
  
'Hmm...what is that?' Ranma muttered as she spotted a blue glow below her.  
  
**********  
  
To Be Continued...  
  
Ending Notes - Ranma's change will be explained, no he's not permanently stuck as a girl, and this isn't a make Ranma a god fic. Ranma will be strong, but he will have to work for it and that is the basis of this story, his attempt to get home and the journey he takes to do so. I will be doing this one in a series of episodes three to four chapers long as he explores around and learns more about his powers and this strange new world.   
  
If any of you have anything you would like to see let me know and I'll try and get it doen in one of the episodes. I'm even considering opening this up for anyone to use the story line so we can get all kinds of different adventures.   
  
^_^  
  
C. Rose  
7/23/02 


	2. Introductions

**********  
Prime Attitude  
Chapter 01  
Cory D. Rose  
ertle2@msn.com  
(c) 2002  
**********  
  
Much to Ranma's shock, she was facing something she had never encountered before and had a hunch that there wasn't anyone she could turn to for help. She could feel herself floating in some kind of empty void, below her was what looked like a swirling vortex of bright blue energy. There were lightning like streamers of white and blue energy being flung out of it in every conceivable direction at once. They continued out until they vanished in the distance reaches of the odd space where she had found herself. There were so many that she couldn't have kept track of them even if she wanted to, some were big and easy to follow while others were small and barely noticeable even to her trained senses, going all over the place in strange zig zag patterns. Ranma was amazed to think she had reached this thing by going into a deep meditative trance and looking within herself, on the few occasions she'd done this there had been nothing like this. Where in the world had it come from?  
  
Then the vortex of blue energy lashed out with a lightning bolt of bright blue energy that she had to dodge, but moving in this void of nothingness was difficult and she barely managed to twist herself out of the way. Then, to her horror, she realized that dodging may not have been a good idea as she suddenly lost control of what ever had been allowing her to hover over the vortex. It pulsed and another bolt of lightning lashed out to strike along her chest, back, and head in rapid succession. The pain was incredibly intense, but nothing compared to the pain she had felt during the transfer to this universe. It was enough to make her scream and the sound seemed to echo through out the void as she struggled against the energy coursing through her like a living thing.  
  
Ranma struggled against the pain and just as she was starting to gain a bit of control over it she noticed that the lightning was reeling her in like a fish. By now it was to late to try anything to stop it and lets out a gasp as she is pulled into the vortex against her will. Like a roller coaster ride from hell, she was pulled through a long twisting tunnel that seemed to be surging with lightning as it twisted and writhed like a dying snake. She could feel the electricity as it flowed around her body, sparking and arching from her to the edges of the tunnel and back every few seconds. Then as suddenly as it started, it all stopped, all color, all sound, everything vanished as if had never been.  
  
She found herself in the void again, but this was different than the other one, this was something she hadn't expected. There was this weird feeling all over her body and as she started to look around she noticed that there were stars flickering brightly all around her. She twisted around and noticed a bright red cloud floating through the sparkling void, reflecting the light from the stars all around her. It was a beautiful sight, one that took her a few seconds to recognize and even longer to accept. She was floating in deep space, how she had ended up here while searching her own mind was a mystery to her and should have been impossible.  
  
"Hello Ranma Saotome."  
  
Ranma twisted around and gaped at the small throne shaped asteroid floating nearby, she knew that it hadn't been there a few seconds ago when she was scanning the area. Sitting on the throne was a figure of indeterminate sex, he/she was covered in a shadow that kept her from seeing many details. It was leaning over from it's chair and seemed to be studying her. "Wha...?"   
  
"No need to panic Ranma, I won't hurt you or attack you."  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
"I have no name, never really had a need for one over the long years of my existence."  
  
"I need to call you something." Ranma insisted.  
  
"Call me Aho then, it means 'blue' in your language."  
  
Ranma smiled. "Aho it is, so what in the world is going on here?"  
  
"You did something a little foolish and extremely brave, you dug so far into your soul that you managed to find the energy link that was given to you when you crossed the dimensional barrier. It wasn't expected that you would ever find it or if you did, it would be a couple decades down the road when you had learned to use this power with more skill."  
  
"That blue vortex is giving me these new abilities McCoy told me about?"  
  
Aho nodded. "Yes, its a link to a powerful source of energy that can do incredible things, the vortex is how your mind interpreted the link."  
  
"Why was it given to me?" Ranma asked and crossed her arms.  
  
"Chance mostly, it's an energy source that hadn't been used in eons and something no one from your dimension has ever touched."  
  
"Take it back, my life is complicated enough as it is, this will just make things worse than ever."  
  
Aho shook it's head. "I can't, once the link is established it is impossible to undue it. You formed the link yourself when you crossed over, it was an unconscious thing, but you did it nonetheless."  
  
  
"Then send me home, I have a feeling you can do that, I don't want to be in this dimension. From what I've heard so far it's a horrible place to be, I have no family here, nothing to even call my own."  
  
"Oh please Ranma, you have struggled against change for as long as you've lived, it's one of the few things Genma instilled in you. You are a well forged piece of metal Ranma, you won't just give up just because something has gotten a bit to hard to understand. We both know it, look at how long you struggled against your feelings for Akane, your hatred of your father, the fact that you can't find one tiny bit of love in your heart for your mother..."  
  
"DO NOT BRING MY MOTHER INTO THIS!!!" Ranma screamed, she started glowing with a blue energy aura of static electricity.  
  
"I am well aware of the truth Ranma, you need to stop lying to yourself and you know it too. I am now a part of you, I know your inner most feelings, you history, everything about you."  
  
"I do love my mother!!"  
  
"Believe what you will then, but you're only fooling yourself and causing more pain than there needs to be." Aho said coldly.  
  
Ranma growled.  
  
Aho's eyes narrowed and it sighed loudly as it came to a decision, it had hopped that Ranma would pull off a miracle, but it looked like it had been right all along. "You are here way too early Ranma, come back when you have better control of yourself and your abilities. I have looked at your destiny line and know that you will have a most interesting life from now on, go and forget the way back here until you find your true self. Your battle with Saffron will seem like   
child's play once you mature into your full power. You will not remember how to get back here until you are powerful enough to get through a memory block I'm placing in your mind." With that said, it's eyes flashed a bright blue.  
  
Ranma's eyes snapped open as she fell off the bed and hit her head on the floor, she shuddered as she recalled the level of power coming off that thing. To think that something like that even exists and it just sat there in all it's arrogance and lectured her on how good the future would be? What a load of bullshit, she rolled to her feet and looked around at the room's sparse surroundings and wondered if these people could have put her in odder looking room. That was when she realized that her eyesight had returned while she was meditating, at least something good had come out of that waste of time and true to the beings word she couldn't remember how to get back to where she was.   
  
She looked around and found that she was in a lightly decorated room of some kind, the bed was typical American style with two thick mattresses, sheets, and a metal frame at the bottom, a simple gray carpet, wood paneling on the walls, a couple of odd looking pictures, and a silver metal like door with no handle at all. Looking it over she came across a small pad of some kind at the edge of the door frame and she walked over to give a closer look, there was a small window in the pad that had the word 'Locked' highlighted in green. Ranma wasn't all that good with devices like this but she did recognize them and knew how to bypass them somewhat easily. The old man was a thief after all and they had 'borrowed' a room from the large mansions upon occasion.   
  
The door itself was like a half moon shaped closet door set into some tracks on the floor. She tried to grip the edge and pull it back into the wall even though the little window said the door was locked, but figured it was worth checking anyway. Deep down she knew that the thing was quite flimsy and good kick in the right place would get her out of the room in an instant. Then as she was considering doing just that she noticed a second door off to the right and slightly hidden down a short walkway. To her delight it led into the room's bathroom, with a grin she stepped inside and thought that this was a chance to finally get changed back into a guy. Then she recalled what she was wearing and gagged a little, though after looking in a nearby wall mirror she had to admit that it made her look good in this form fitting thing. This was all she had to wear as well, the main room didn't really have any extra clothes laying around and decked out in such a thing would draw way to much attention if she walked around in public, it was practically indecent. Akane would have slapped her silly for even thinking of wearing anything like this, though she had to concede that it would've been fun to get her to wear the thing.  
  
Ranma shrugged and decided that turning back into a guy at the moment wouldn't be a good idea and pulled the jacket back on, at least it was some kind of covering and loads better than running around naked. She'd had enough of that when Mousse had challenged her to that first fight and slowly stripped her in front of the crowd with that stupid hook of his. Moving out of the bathroom she reached into a pocket and pulled out a set of green gloves and wondered how long they had been in the pocket. Tossing them on a nearby chair as she passed she didn't think she would be needing them for anything since all they did was lower her sense of touch. That was when the locked door opened and she turned to see who it was, she had to stare at the large blue furred thing in front of her, it had on a pair of glasses, shorts, and a lab coat. It stopped and smiled at her, showing a bunch of deadly looking teeth that looked like they could easily rend her flesh, luckily it had a tray of food in it's hands.  
  
"How are you feeling Ranma?" McCoy asked, ignoring the look of curiosity that was written all over her face.  
  
"Ah! Dr. McCoy! I nearly forgot that you looked like that." Ranma laughed nervously.  
  
"Not a problem, I take a second and even a third glance to get used to."   
  
"I'll say, give me a day or so and I'll adjust to this."  
  
"How much of your eyesight has returned?"  
  
"All of it."  
  
Beast nodded and held up the tray. "I brought you some food, I wasn't sure what you like to eat for dinner, but since your Japanese we sent out for some food."  
  
Ranma moved over to the tray and saw that it was a pretty typical Japanese fast food meal of rice, noodles, and a side dish of some kind. She grabbed the tray as her stomach growled. Grabbing the chopsticks she snapped them apart and breezed through the meal, slow for her, but way faster than what Beast had probably ever seen. "Mhis is fraet."   
  
"How can you taste anything when you eat it that fast?"  
  
"Gotta eat it fast or the old man will steal it." Ranma muttered as she finished off the meal, she considered licking the bowl clean, then did so.  
  
Beast laughed. "We have some more if you want any?"  
  
Ranma grinned. "Sure! I need to get out of this room anyway."  
  
Beast moved over to the door and tapped in a quick code to open the door then led her out of the room and gave a quick tour of the level they were on, the lab area, library, landing bay, mess hall, and pointed out the Danger Room and it's huge main door. Ranma took it all in, not really commenting on anything, she could tell they were trying to hide something and didn't really care what it was. They obviously didn't really trust her and were going out of their way to make sure she didn't see anything really odd. So far she hadn't seen one window or door that would lead to an exit either, to her that meant she was underground or in an enclosed building of some kind. The food McCoy brought her had been good so she was willing to concede them a little leeway, but at the moment it seemed as if they were both trying to hide some secrets from each other.  
  
Telling them about the person she had met while meditating was out of the question, it was none of their business and proving it was impossible. So she kept her thoughts to herself and followed along, the instant she saw a way out she would be out of here. So far they hadn't been treating her that bad, but they were keeping her from leaving and that was getting on her nerves, she wanted to find a way home as soon as possible. Blue boy here wasn't being all that obvious about it, but he was being careful not to tell her to much. These X-men had their secrets and they were taking steps to keep her from finding out what they were.  
  
"Where does that door lead?" Ranma asked as the tour was winding down.  
  
Beast turned to look. "That's the elevator that leads up to the main level, I can show you that later when you're feeling better. Right now I want to make sure your healing correctly, it was just a short time ago that you were nearly killed after all."  
  
"I always heal fast." Ranma snorted.  
  
"Maybe, but we also need to make sure you don't have a relapse of some kind. You just got your eyesight back as well, I still don't know how that happened so quickly, but we can check it out when you are ready for another examination after while."  
  
"It was bound to happen eventually." Ranma said with a shrug, she didn't want to deal with an examination, but figured it would probably be a good idea.   
  
There was a ding and Ranma turned to see a tall woman step out of the elevator, she had an outfit on that was nearly identical to the one she was wearing. The woman also had the same Ki signature she had detected earlier, the one that was slightly out of whack with her body, Ranma wasn't sure but there was a good possibility that someone had messed around with the way the girl's Ki worked. She also noticed that about the only thing on her whole body that wasn't covered in some way was her face, did the girl have some kind of thing about being touched? The girl was wearing a pair of gloves like the pair Ranma remembered tossing on the chair in her room earlier. This had to be the girl that had given her these funny clothes, she really tried not to glare at her to much.  
  
"Well hello there, it's good to see ya up and about again. We were a bit worried about ya." Rogue said with a grin. "I'm Rogue."  
  
The southern accent was pretty noticeable, but Ranma had heard a lot worse accents when ever a tourist tried to pronounce in Japanese. American tourists were always a laugh riot to listen to when they had no clue how to speak a language, talk slowly, loudly, and with authority and you can make yourself understood in any language, at least this seemed to be the universal rule. Ranma had seen it too many times to count, his old man was as guilty of that as any American, he still recalled the time he had tried to make that Chinese girl understand what he wanted. She had been agreeable at first, then he said something that set her off, this pissed off her family who were nearby. Ranma recalled being dragged out of that small village as his father ran for his life, the whole village had chased after them waving an assortment of weapons and screaming obscenities at them. *  
  
"Thanks Rogue, I hope I get out of here pretty soon though, I don't like to be cooped up like this."  
  
Rogue grinned. "Well you come with me, Beast here has always been over protective when he had a patient to take care of. I figure if you're good enough to walk around you're good enough to head up stairs and meet some of the others."  
  
"Maybe a little, but Ranma was near death less than forty eight hours ago..." Beast started to complain.  
  
Rogue waved him off. "Well she's standing here looking as good as new right now, so keeping her cooped up down here isn't really needed."  
  
"But..." Beast started.  
  
"Bugger off Beast, you worry to much." Rogue turned to Ranma. "Have you eaten yet?"  
  
"Yeah, Beast here had the kitchen make up a pretty decent snack..."  
  
"Excellent, then you have time to take a shower and put on some decent clothes and come up stairs and spend the night watching TV with the rest of us." Rogue declared and dragged a confused Ranma to the elevator.  
  
"Um..." Beast tried to say again, then shrugged and headed of to his lab, if the girl was up stairs with the rest of the team then he had time to work on a few other things while she was busy. The blood sample he had taken from Ranma had turned up some pretty amazing things that he wanted to look at in greater detail anyway. Maybe a bit of extra work on that would turn up something of interest and then there was that curse of his/her's to think about, he had to see it in action to get better readings on it. Maybe he could find a cure for her...um, he would have to learn to call 'him' by the right gender as well. He kept picturing her completely naked in his arms while they were on the plane, 'she' had been 100% female. Those curves could not be faked.   
  
"Oh my." Beast muttered and blushed under his blue fur.  
  
**********  
  
The elevator ride up to the main floor only took a few seconds and the doors opened to reveal a large room with couches and chairs all over the place. They moved out of this room and into a hallway that led to a different part of the house and Ranma realized that this place was huge. Even bigger with those levels below ground, she wondered just how large this place actually was and what everyone here did exactly. Ranma followed along behind Rogue until they wandered into the women's quarters on the other side of the mansion, the main entrance had to the hall had a large plaque over the door that this was no man's land. Ranma glanced at the sign but quickly decided that with her current form she didn't exactly qualify as a guy, but would have to tell Rogue about the curse eventually. A few minutes later they entered Rogue's room, this was the real thing, not the one she had been locked in down below.  
  
As they walked Ranma noticed that Rogue hadn't made one comment about her curse, so figured that those two guys had kept their word about letting her tell everybody on the team. The dammed thing seemed to get her in so much trouble that sometimes it was hard to predict how things would go when she told someone about it. Some people didn't really care and took in stride, while others, namely Akane, used it against him to brand him as a monster that didn't fit her world view. There were days that he had wanted to strangle her just so that he wouldn't have to put up with her insults to his manhood anymore, but his family honor was at stake, the last shred of it in fact. He had earned his skill in the art through pain and blood and ten years of training with the old man. She was a gifted fighter, but would never reach his level with her current attitude, he refused to marry someone that treated him like that. Ranma figured all this crap with Akane had started because he kept the curse from her when they arrived at the Tendo's place.   
  
These X-men were different though, they had experience with these kinds of things and if some of the things he had been able to piece together so far were to be believed, they had encountered things that even he found a little hard to believe. Still, he would take a chance, this girl was the one he had felt earlier as well and she was full of depression and sadness, broadcasting it out like a wave that he could feel at a hundred paces. It was of a similar type that he used to find Ryoga all the time, though this girl had nothing on the Lost Moron when it came to drowning one's life in pure depression.   
  
"Here y'all go, just strip out of that thing and you can take a shower if'n ya like."  
  
Shaking her head, Ranma sighed and turned to look at Rogue. "Rogue there is something I think I should tell you."  
  
"What's that?"   
  
"Um...I don't like to talk about it...to tell you the truth, I told the Doc and Xavier, but I doubt they've had a chance to tell the rest of you yet."  
  
"Well don't beat about the bush, we need to get you cleaned up, so just spit it out." Rogue said.  
  
"I guess you could call it one of my powers, though I call it my curse." Ranma muttered as she stepped over to the shower, started it up, and let the hot water heat up a bit.  
  
"The professor said something about that, but didn't give any details, what was he talking about?" Rogue asked.  
  
"Oh? Well it's a lot easier to show you than tell you. No one ever believes me until they've seen it work." Ranma said as she took off her jacket and fiddled with the odd suit until she figured out that it would stretch out enough to be taken off. Rogue didn't even blink as Ranma stripped it down to her waist and turned to turn the shower on.   
  
"You sure you want me in here to see this?" Rogue asked a few seconds later as she showed the first signs of discomfort to Ranma's nakedness.  
  
Ranma shrugged as she held her hand near the water and felt the heat coming off of it. "It won't matter in a moment. My curse is a shape shifting curse, I am normally male, but cold water changes me to female, hot water turns me back." Ranma said as she stepped under the spray of water, moving before Rogue could say anything, he grinned a bit sheepishly as her eyes tripled in size and she staggered back a few steps in shock. He had left the weird outfit hanging from his waist down so he wouldn't show off anything the girl would find offensive.  
  
"Y-your, you...a man..." Rogue gasped.  
  
Ranma nodded. "Yep, this is my true form. Male, and proud of it."  
  
Stepping out of the shower Ranma guided the confused woman over to the bed and smiled at her as she all but fell down the instant the back of her knees touched it. He moved back to the bathroom with his 'arrogant walk' as Akane liked to call it, and shut the door. He could feel Rogue's eyes on his back for every inch of the way, Nabiki had done to the same thing when he wrapped a towel around himself and walked from the Tendo bathroom to his room every now and then. He'd never mentioned that he knew she was watching, just ignored her like he usually did so things didn't get any worse between them. Even Akane had commented more than once on his shamelessness at times, but he was comfortable with his male body so didn't really care if they liked to look or not.  
  
Once he got the suit off completely, Ranma did a quick visual inspection of his body, he seemed to be the same as he had always been, though he was a bit sore here and there. Nothing seemed out of place so he figured that the increase in density that the Doc had mentioned wasn't that noticeable or wouldn't show up for a while yet. He was glad to be out of that suit though, he swore he hadn't stopped sweating since he put it on, he felt clammy and gross and had to smell ten worse. It reminded him of things that happened on the training trip and brought back far to many bad memories.  
  
Visions of an ancient sewer in an unnamed city off the coast of China came to him as he stood there and let the water cascade around him. The sound of wolves and rats as they chased after him as he ran through that insane maze of darkness and hoped beyond hope that he would find the way out before he was caught. Ranma shook his head and blinked a bit of the water out of his eyes, and tried to will the horrid memories away. His memories have never been this 'real' before, it was as if he was there physically, he could recall every sound, smell, movement of that horrible run, with death just steps behind him nipping at his heels for days on end. His father had come upon this idea that the more he pushed his son the stronger he would be, survival of the fittest and all that crap. The city's sewer had been over run with animals and other dangers over the years, so there had only been one thing to do, toss in Ranma and meet him at the other end of the maze of crisscrossing sewer tunnels. The run had taken three weeks, far longer than the six hours his father had told him it would take and he had been on the run the whole time with wolves, gators, rats, and bugs out to kill him for food. He recalled shivering in fear as he hid in the small tunnels at night, the one's the wolves couldn't get into. Even to this day the sound of a wolf could send willies down his spine, a bug nibbling on a piece of him would wind up with a small Ki blast to relieve it of the burden of life, and he would go out of his way to avoid a gator unless he had no choice. Kodachi had no idea how close she had come to losing her pet gator Mr. Turtle that day.  
  
He had survived though, but had to suffer a beating from the old man when he finally did get out, just for making him wait for so long. That had been the last of his traveling clothes and forced him to wander around in a Gi like the old man, that reminded him, he didn't like that suit he'd been wearing as a girl, even if it had made him look good. He needed something more to his tastes, he'd have to see what this place had available, or head into town to 'borrow' something? He shook his head and blanked his mind as he concentrated on getting cleaned up for the rest of his shower, then got out and dried off. Wrapping the towel around himself, he stepped out of the bathroom when he was done and moved into the bedroom where he'd left Rogue. He sensed someone else out in the main room as he stepped out of the bathroom, he spotted Xavier sitting in a kind of hovering chair beside the bed. That was when Ranma realized that the guy was crippled, he hadn't even thought about it before, but the strange hovering chair explained that odd noise he recalled from earlier when they first talked to each other. The guy was still trying to wrap his head in a layer of Ki too, he would probably have to do something about that.  
  
"So this is what you look like in male form?" Xavier asked as Rogue gaped at him from the bed, this time because Ranma was naked under the towel.  
  
Ranma nodded. "Yep, this is the real me. Where can I get some decent clothes, that body suit I was wearing as a girl won't work with me as a guy."  
  
"Sure it will honey." Rogue said from the bed. "Several of the male members of the X-men wear a spandex uniform, even Wolverine and he's more macho than you are."   
  
Ranma glared at her.  
  
"Rogue..." Xavier said and glared at her.  
  
"Sorry sir."   
  
"The outfit might be a part of the uniform you wear as a member of this team, but I'm not a member, so I need something else." Ranma muttered.  
  
"Quite so, but we've run into this problem before so I'll have some clothing made up for you down in the labs. Something you can wear in both forms, it will adjust to your altered sized and so forth, we just need to have you approve it. Put that spandex uniform back on, Rogue will show you how to loosen it once more and we can head down to the lab and have something made up for you."  
  
Ranma didn't like it, but it was better than nothing and he already had some ideas about what he wanted, red and black silk danced in his head. He nodded as Rogue told him about a button on the belt buckle that would cause the spandex to expand a bit and allow him to put it back on. There was no way he was going to wear that thing as a guy, he would be too embarrassed, so he splashed a bit of cold water on his face and put the dumb thing back on. From there they headed back down to the lab with Xavier leading, they went into one of those rooms that the McCoy had avoided on the initial tour. It was a medium sized room with a large machine set against the back wall and curved around to a couple of computer stations along each of the side walls. The lights came on the instant the door opened and they crossed ther room to stand in front of one of the consoles near a small open booth. This was set in the center of the machine and seemed to be made out of glass of some sort, it had little glowing wires running through it.   
  
"Is there anything you had in mind for clothing Ranma? I can make up just about anything with this? " Xavier asked as he typed on the keyboard a little.  
  
"This is the machine that made the outfit you're wearing now." Rogue said. "I planned on using it at one time, but the colors green and black just didn't seem to fit me so I switched to this gold and green color for a uniform."  
  
Ranma took that in and nodded, he thought about what he wanted for several seconds before deciding to go with what he knew. "This can make anything?"  
  
"Almost anything clothing wise, I got it from an old friend of mine a few years back and it's been a life saver more than once, it saves us tons of money." Xavier explained as he ignored the strange look Rogue gave him when he said the word 'friend'.  
  
"I need three things then, several sets of multi colored silk shirts and baggy black silk pants along the lines of what I was wearing when the Doc picked me up. Then I need a jacket of some kind, I like this one that Rogue loaned me, but it's far too constricting and wouldn't make it through a decent battle."  
  
"Hey!" Rogue yelled.  
  
"I get into lots of fights." Ranma explained.  
  
Xavier laughed. "Ranma, that jacket is nearly indestructible. The only thing that could harm it is fire or a high level energy blast, it's pretty much immune to everything else, as mutants we have to take on threats that a normal human would never survive. Even that spandex is a kind of armor, though no where near as resilient as the jacket."  
  
"Oh." Ranma muttered. "Well then give me a black leather jacket then."  
  
"What else did you need?"  
  
"Pants, shirts, and a coat, that about does it and if these things are as durable as you say then they will last me for some time."   
  
"Make him up a uniform as well Professor, maybe as a parting gift or something." Rogue said with an evil grin.  
  
"Sure, what would you like for a uniform Ranma." Xavier asked as he typed away on a computer and holographic display of various heroes popped up from a small circular area in the middle of the room, it showed some of the older X-men and other well known heroes in still pictures taken from a fight. They stayed up for a couple of seconds before vanishing and being replaced with a new hologram, Ranma watched and had to keep from laughing at several of the costumes. For some reason some of them reminded him of some of the different kinds of outfits Satsuki might have worn to hide himself from Kuno's wrath. There was one chick in purple that was wearing a bathing suit with butt floss and thigh high boots that Shampoo would have loved, then there was a few guys wearing that spandex stuff and looked like they were standing there in the nude with the suit panted on and seriously constipated, some girl in a yellow trench coat and...shorts seemed to be the most normal costume he noticed and even that was a bit weird.   
  
"Do I have to?" Ranma asked, this was so dumb.   
  
"Not at all." Xavier said.  
  
"Then I'll skip this, is that all we have to do?"  
  
"Nope, I have the machine getting ready to make the clothing, but it needs to do a body scan of you, just step into the booth and we'll let it get to work. Rogue, will you go and get a glass of hot water for Ranma so we can change him for the second scan."  
  
"Sure professor."  
  
Ranma blinked as she rose up into the air and actually flew out of the room as if it was the easiest thing in the world to do. "How in the world did she do that?!"  
  
Xavier chuckled again. "She is one of our strongest members, she can fly, is invulnerable to damage, and super strong."  
  
"Sounds like she would be a lot of fun to fight." Ranma said as she stepped into the small booth. "Do I need to take my clothes off for this?"  
  
"No, since what you're wearing was made by this machine it can 'see' through them to get the proper measurements."  
  
"Cool." Ranma said as the booth lit up and seemed to take pictures of her from all directions, the glowing wires seemed to light up even more as they lit up from the floor and made their way up to the top of the booth, then it was done.   
  
Rogue returned a few seconds later, just as Ranma was stepping out of the booth, he took the glass and frowned as he looked down at the outfit, then poured the hot water over herself. Ranma shifted to male and growled as the suit didn't, it pinched in all the wrong areas and showed off portions of his body that shouldn't have been in that stupid outfit. He ignored Rogue's roving eye as he stepped back into the booth and let the machine have another go at him, he felt like a bug under a microscope now. He figured Nabiki would have been taking lots of pictures and selling them to highest bidder while doing cat calls to make him blush, supposedly the girls like those the best.  
  
"We're done Ranma, the machine should have everything done in a few seconds." Xavier said just as the requested clothing materialized on a table in the middle of the room, right where the holograms had been before. "There you go, normally we just materialize the uniform right on you, but since you requested multiple outfits with special properties I had them placed there instead. We've also got your measure now so this shouldn't have to be done again for several months or so, that is if you stick around anyway."  
  
Wandering over to the table Ranma grabbed up a copy of his normal out fit and noticed that there wasn't any underwear. For a second he thought about asking for some, but shrugged it off when he noticed that Rogue was still watching him, he would find a way to buy a few pair as soon as he could. "Where can I change out of this spandex thing?"  
  
"Hold on." Xavier said and tapped a button.   
  
Ranma gasped as his clothing shimmered and he was suddenly wearing a red shirt and black pants again, but something felt off about them. "These feel different than the one's I'm used to, but they should work fine, for some reason they weigh more than the one's I'm used to."  
  
"Then if we're finished we can head upstairs." Xavier said and started for the door, but Ranma interrupted him before he got to far.  
  
"Oops, I think I need one more thing." Ranma said suddenly.  
  
"What would that be?" Xavier asked.  
  
Ranma pointed down and wiggled his toes.  
  
"Ah."  
  
**********  
  
Clad in a new pair of boots, Ranma headed for the elevator and went back upstairs to get a bit more to eat. He was incredibly hungry for some reason, even after eating that meal the McCoy had brought him earlier, and figured he could have eaten a whole side of beef with no trouble if given the chance. Rogue walked along beside him as they entered the kitchen and he could feel her eyes on him again, but he kept quiet and didn't say anything. She didn't seem to want to fight him and bringing it up might cause more problems than it was worth. He had learned enough lessons from Akane and the others to know he should keep his mouth shut, that way they wouldn't hit him for no reason. He opened the walk in fridge and found it stocked to the rafters, there had to be enough food to feed and army in there. Digging around for little bit he and pulled out enough materials to make a couple of large sandwiches.  
  
Rogue just watched as he made a giant sandwich and scarfed it down in a few bites without even taking time to enjoy it. Then he made another one and at it as well, all in less than ten minutes and if he wasn't full after than she had a feeling their food stores wouldn't last to long. Ranma was on his third sandwich when a large man entered the kitchen and stalked into the room, he was wearing dark clothing, had black skin, and the letter 'M' tattooed over his right eye. Ranma noted that the guy carried himself like a trained warrior and if that huge gun he had on his shoulder was any indication, very dependent on high powered weaponry. The guy grunted as he spotted Ranma and studied the newcomer, what he saw was a surprise to say the least.   
  
"Who is this Rogue?" Bishop asked.  
  
'Oh goody, lets do all this useless male posturing now.' Rogue thought as she glanced over at Bishop. "Bishop, this is Ranma Saotome. He's from a long ways off, a different dimension to be exact."  
  
"Why is he here?"  
  
"We're giving him a hand, he needs to find a way home and doesn't have anywhere else to go while he's here."  
  
"We have equipment that can cross dimensions, I don't see the problem." Bishop said, he didn't see why they had to let a security risk like this into the mansion. From the looks of things so far the kid had already been down in the uniform room. Why hadn't beast kept him locked up down in the sub levels where the kid couldn't escape and cause damage?  
  
This was information to Ranma, Xavier hadn't said anything about having any equipment that could send him home. "Wha...?"  
  
"Where would you have us send him Bishop?"  
  
"Back where he came from."  
  
"...and where is that Bishop? Do you know? We certainly don't and there are billions of possibilities and it would take years to just search randomly."  
  
Bishop grunted and stomped out of the kitchen.  
  
"Well he's certainly happy with life." Rogue muttered.  
  
"What's with him?" Ranma asked around the last of his sandwich.  
  
Rogue shrugged. "Bishop has these strange personality quirks, doesn't like many people, and tends to jump to conclusions about most everyone else he meets. Don't worry about him, he's new to the team so he'll adjust eventually."  
  
"He's a member of the team?"  
  
"Yeah, he handles the weapons and has the ability to absorb and redirect energy blasts."  
  
"Who else is on this team of yours?"  
  
"We have several members, Cyclops and Storm are our leaders, then there is Beast, Bishop, Wolverine, Phoenix, and a few others that aren't here right now. Sometimes Colossus, Shadowcat, and Nightcrawler join us, but right now it's just me and the others."  
  
"What all can everyone do?"  
  
"Various things, the professor told you about me and Cyclops, Storm can control the weather, Wolverine has a super quick healing ability that allows him to shrug off things that would kill just about anyone else, Bishop can absorb and redirect energy, and Phoenix is a powerful telepath and telekinetic."  
  
Ranma blinked and shook his head. "Like any of that means anything to me, I'm just a normal person, I don't know what a telepath, a telekinetic or some of the other things that you've mentioned mean."  
  
"Ah..." Rogue started.  
  
"Don't worry, I've got to get used to this place before I can do anything else." Said Ranma. "What exactly is it you guys do?"  
  
"Well we're trying to achieve the Professor's dream of human and mutant coexistence."  
  
"Oh? How do you do that?"  
  
"We try to keep other mutants from using their powers to harm others and help save the normal humans when they do."  
  
"That sounds pretty good." Ranma said as he considered another sandwich.  
  
"Not really, you see there are a good number of mutants that use their powers for bad or evil things and the humans tend to blame all mutants for the actions of these others." Rogue pointed out. "More than once we have seen a mutant get caught by frightened and angry humans and..."   
  
"They are beat up or hurt?"   
  
Rogue nodded and sighed. "For every mutant that can exist in society without getting into trouble, there are dozens of others that have been...beat to within an inch of their lives or even killed."  
  
"That's pretty bad alright and your group is trying to make things more peaceful?"  
  
"Yeah." Rogue said as Beast wandered into the kitchen.  
  
"Ah Ranma there you are." Beast said as he came into the kitchen. "How are you feeling?"  
  
"I'm still a little weak, but if I had to fight one of my rivals I wouldn't have much problem with it."  
  
"Rivals?" Rogue asked.  
  
"Yep, Ryoga, Mousse, Happosai, Cologne, Taro and a few others that aren't quite as dangerous as they are."  
  
"Well there's no need to worry about them since they're a whole dimension away from here, for now Charles wanted me to introduce you to the rest of the team. He figures it will save a lot of time and arguments with those that don't know you are here in the mansion. "  
  
"Sure." Ranma said with a shrug.  
  
Beast led him through a part of the house he hadn't been to before and into the TV room where several people were sitting around watching the biggest television Ranma had ever seen in his life, it had to be taller than he was and built right into the wall. He ignored what they were watching and looked around the room as he recognized Bishop and the glare that had been leveled at him, but shrugged it off as he looked at the others. Ranma made a note to take the guy down a peg or two, he needed and attitude adjustment and fast. To his surprise none of others were wearing those hokey costumes, Ranma glanced back at Beast when he waved a hand at a couple sitting on the couch.   
  
"Ranma, this here is Scott Summers and Jean Grey, in the chair over there is Logan, Beside him is Bishop, and over there is Ororo Monroe. They go by the names Cyclops, Phoenix, Wolverine, Bishop, and Strom."  
  
"Why do you all have those weird names?"   
  
"Huh?" Beast asked, caught off guard by the question.  
  
"I don't understand why you use the second name, the Cyclops, Wolverine, and such. The only one here that doesn't is Bishop."  
  
"Protection." Bishop said.  
  
"From what?" Ranma asked back.  
  
"Mutants are feared by normal people and since we fight people that could potentially hurt our friends and family we use the code names to protect those we care for." Ororo said.  
  
Ranma cocked his head to the side in confusion. "Then why in the world are you telling me your names?"  
  
"Charles said I was to introduce you to the team." Said Beast.  
"I disagreed with this plan of action, but I had no say in it either way." Bishop said.  
  
"Well...alright I guess, it's nice to meet all of you."   
  
"Everyone, Charles said I was to inform all of you of Ranma's presence. He's from Japan, but it seems he's from a different dimension than us and needs a place to stay until he can figure out what to do or how to get home."  
  
"Is he joining the team?" Scott asked.  
  
"Not if I have to wear one of those goofy outfits I've seen." Ranma muttered a little too loudly.  
  
"Hey!" Scott said.  
  
Wolverine and Bishop just chuckled and nodded.  
  
"Not to worry Ranma, you don't have to join if you don't want too. We were just looking out for the best way to help you and get you acquainted with this dimension as quickly as possible." Beast said.  
  
"Alright." Ranma said. "I'll think about it."  
  
"Good enough, if you want we can run some tests to see how you handle yourself."   
  
"How?" Ranma asked and wondered if they were all going to gang up on him to see how he fought.   
  
"We'll use the practice room where we can monitor your reactions in a controlled environment."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"The Danger Room, kid. Where we all practice the use of our powers from time to time when we need to work on something, the room can handle a lot more punishment than the woods outside can and be repaired a lot quicker." Logan said as he puffed away on his cigar.  
  
"What in the world is a Danger Room, Xavier mentioned it before but I didn't get a chance to ask about it."  
  
"It's down on the second level, if you feel up to it we can run you through some of the programs any time you want." Beast said and pulled out his clip board to take down some more notes.  
  
"Can I see this thing in action first?"  
  
"Sure, any of you want to run through a program right now?"  
  
Logan stood up and stalked out of the room. "Let's do it, I have some kinks to work out anyway."  
  
The rest of the team decided to stay and finish watching their movie and fought over Logan's popcorn as Beast and Ranma jogged after Wolverine. Beast explained that most of the second level was devoted to the Danger Room itself, a large room about the size of a football field that could mimic any kind of environment they wanted with solid light holograms. Nodding, Ranma pretended to understand what it was as Beast chattered on as if nothing was wrong. A few seconds later they stepped into the control room, it was about fifteen feet long and had a row of computers running along the front wall where several large windows over looked an enclosed room with plane gray walls covered in strange weaving patterns.  
  
Sitting down at the console Beast took a few seconds to boot the system up, Ranma looked out the window and saw that Logan was down on the floor putting on a goofy outfit. It was mostly yellow, but had slashes here and there, a pair of knee high blue boots, and a weird mask that explained the man's incredible case of 'hat' hair. Ranma had to admit that the guy did give that ridiculous outfit a dangerous quality though, as if he know that no matter what he was wearing he was going to kill something today. Finishing the boot up Beast tapped a few keys and lowered the lights in the booth then pressed a toggle switch.  
  
"Logan, are you ready?"  
  
"Go ahead fur ball."  
  
"Alright." Beast said and tapped a button in front of him.  
  
Ranma gasped as the whole room changed before his eyes, the swirls in the walls glowed for few seconds and wavered like a heat wave illusion before solidifying into a path of some kind. He wasn't sure where the illusion finished and the room began because he could see far into the distance as if they had actually outside in broad daylight. Ranma wondered how an illusion of a clear day was going to be dangerous, but decided to see what would happen since Beast was still messing with the computer. Down below Wolverine was going through some stretches while still puffing away on that cigar.  
  
"There we go, that program needs to be updated a bit, the thing's so old that it these new computers have a hard time running it.'' Beast muttered to himself.  
  
Down below the air shimmered and several Sentinels appeared, thirty foot purple and blue robots, and Ranma could see Wolverine snarl at them clear from the both as he ran forward. The robots reacted slowly, but as Wolverine got closer they started to perk up and pair off into teams as they moved to surround him. Their arms came up and started to fire blasts of energy at him, but he dodged them easily by rolling, jumping, and spinning out of the way of each shot. Ranma was surprised to recongnize some of the moves Wolverine was using. A martial system he had encountered somewhere along this ten year training trip, but he couldn't really place where. The robots quickly adapted and started to attack Wolverine in different ways and from varying directions all at once, one used a stronger blast as a second tried to block him from going beyond a certain point, while two others ejected some kind of gas out of their hands. Wolverine didn't even slow as popped a set of tiger claws out of the backs of his hands in mid jump and started to slice them to pieces and inch at a time.  
  
Now Ranma was impressed, that kind of skill wasn't easy to come by and this guy was ripping his way through these things with ease, he must have known a variant of Kuno's tree slicing trick. He noted that every time Wolverine took out one of those robots he went for the back of the robot's 'neck', never the same way twice either, some times he would cut it with those strange blades of his, or would use himself as bait to get the other Sentinels to fire at him and jump out of the way at the last second so that they blasted the other Sentinel instead. Ranma recognized personal experience when he saw it, this guy had been fighting like this for a very long time. He also seemed to know some of the rudiments of Anything Goes style, using everything around him as a weapon, the air, the ground, even the robots themselves as weapons.  
  
Another part of Ranma, a part he didn't think about all that much also analyzed what was being seen and started coming up with ways to battle something like this. Genma had trained Ranma to fight battles without thinking about the fight itself, just to react to the situation as quickly as physically possible. So Ranma was unaware that he was taking in everything he was seeing and learning from it like he was taught, how to defend, how to attack, and how the giant robots worked. Most of it was pretty logical, working as a team they would try to overwhelm or position their target in a position to kill him as easily as possible. Ranma noted that the Sentinels seemed to depend on their hand blasters the most, though he had spotted a gas attack, a javelin like attack that sent a long bar of metal towards a target, and even one that used a machine gun.  
  
Wolverine took it all in stride and worked his way through the Sentinels slowly and methodically and even then they rarely seemed to get very close to killing him. Then to Ranma's surprise more Sentinels showed up, these looked different than the others. There were only four of them, but they were taller and faster than the others, Beast explained that these were a second generation Sentinel that had been developed several years after the others. They were faster, built out of stronger materials, and far more deadly. Ranma had agree as Wolverine's claws seemed to barely scratch them, their hand blasters were a lot more powerful as well, creating twenty foot craters in the ground when the blast damage cleared away.   
  
These new Sentinels were pretty much immune to Wolverine's claws, but Ranma was impressed when he started using the robots against each other. Using himself as bait again he was able to take two of them out, but the last two seemed to have learned about that trick and refused to fire their weapons at each other. Instead they kept him running around between them by firing their hand blasts in rapid blasts that exploded all around Wolverine in a hail of death, Ranma was sure that Wolverine was going to be destroyed.  
  
"We have to help him!" Ranma said suddenly.  
  
"No need to worry Ranma, this is a training room, if Wolverine goes down the program will end and shut down." Beast said.  
  
"But..."  
  
"Logan helped design this adaptation at one time to catch people off guard, I've expanded upon it while we were watching the first battle, that way he won't know all the little tricks to take them down. This way he has to work at it." Beast then grinned, showing a lot of pointy and sharp teeth. "Sentinels also have the ability learn from each other and adapt their own programming to compensate for a weakness, unlike the first set that only had a series of attack plans and defensive measures built in, these new versions can learn how to create and pull off random plans of attack."  
  
"They can learn? Um...Amazing?" Ranma muttered, he had no clue what was so hard about learning how to adapt, but from what Beast was saying, it was something these Sentinels normally shouldn't have been able to do. Ranma had no clue about any of this computer stuff, he'd never had any reason to mess with it while in the training trip and wondered if that was going to be a problem in this world. Even Akane and her sisters seemed to know how to use a computer, but to Ranma it was just a box that could show words and pictures, something completely useless in a battle to the death. This thing in front of him though made him rethink that kind of thing, maybe there was more to computers than he had realized.  
  
"You don't have much experience with computers do you?"  
  
"Not really, no. What use is a box in battle?"  
  
Beast laughed. "Wolverine used to be the same, even today he won't use them all that much, but they do have their uses. Especially for holding and retrieving information and in a fight the right information can let you win with ease."  
  
"Hmm...Nabiki has said something similar."  
  
"Nabiki? Is this a friend?"  
  
"I wouldn't call her a friend, but she isn't really my enemy either, just someone that likes to use other people for her own gain. She has ways of coming up with information that she uses to scam money and favors off of people, according to a couple of girls that work with her she pays pretty good wages too."  
  
"I've known people like that, specializes in small time blackmail and random threats even if she has to create such things herself?"  
  
"Yeah, that's pretty close." Ranma said with a nod.  
  
"Did you learn anything from her?"  
  
Ranma grinned and nodded. "She was always treating me like an idiot and using me so I pretended to be what she thought I was, after awhile it kind of became a habit. Even when I didn't need to do it, I watched her and her gang for several months before I figured out how she was doing some of the things she did and after that it was easy to predict her reactions. I didn't do it very often, but she was a puzzle that needed to be solved and after I did things became easier to live with. Her whole family was strange too, but she had to be the worst of the lot, the others were just...slightly delusional."  
  
"And you were constantly around these people?"  
  
"I lived with them, Nabiki was my fiancee's sister."  
  
"This is the first I've heard of this." Beast said.  
  
"It's the first time since I woke up that anyone has asked, I'll explain it all to you later, but right now Wolverine seems to have beat your program." Ranma said and pointed out into the Danger Room.  
  
The crushed and mangled bodies of two Sentinels were sprawled across each other with a harried looking Wolverine standing on top of them looking like a wild animal, his uniform was nearly shredded off his body and Ranma could see blood running down his arms and legs. , Wolverine reminded him of the Musk in a number of ways, it was a sight Ranma figured Herb would have liked. He was slightly bestial and extremely violent, Beast fit right into that mold too, but his intelligence would have caused problems with the Prince of the Musk. Or would that be Princess of the Musk?  
  
"Oh my, it looks like I might have made that a little too difficult for him." Beast muttered.  
  
Pushing a button Ranma has watched Beast use earlier, he activated the intercom. "Are you alright Wolverine?"  
  
Wolverine shook himself and said something, but it didn't come over the speakers so Beast lifted Ranma's finger off the button. "...fine, just a little more difficult than I expected. It was a good work out."  
  
"Oh yeah, I knew I was forgetting something." Ranma muttered as Beast took over.  
  
"I didn't think you would have that much trouble with the extra Sentinels Wolverine, you must be getting old."   
  
"Ha! Fur ball don't push your luck." Wolverine said as he went in search of a new cigar and lit one up, puffing away contentedly.  
  
"Want to give it a try, I'll tone it down since you don't have Wolverine's healing ability or endurance to take on that many foes." Beast said as he turned to Ranma.  
  
"Don't think I'm such a weakling, I have been training in my family art for over ten years now and I can beat my father without much trouble and he's a Master." Ranma snapped and glared at the blue furred Doctor.  
  
Nodding, Beast made a note to treat Ranma carefully, he didn't seem to take well to certain types of suggestions, quite like Wolverine had been during that first year. Beast was even willing to bet that Ranma would even have the same types of ideas about authority figures like Scott and Charles. "Sorry about that, didn't mean to imply anything, just thought you might want to run through a program."  
  
Ranma nodded. "Why not, it looks like fun. Will I be fighting those Sentinels?"  
  
"No, but something similar lines. I'm going to use them to figure out just how good you are."  
  
"Sounds like fun, lets go for it, I need a little practice time anyway."  
  
**********  
To Be Continued...  
  
Ending Notes - * One learns all the cuss words of a language ten minutes after entering any country, this is from the natives calling you certain things in the knowledge that you have no idea what they are saying. The citizens of every country on the planet do this, it's a law. ^_^ 


	3. Bishop Gone Wild

**********  
Prime Attitude  
Chapter 02 - Learning  
Cory D. Rose  
ertle2@msn.com  
(c) 2002  
**********  
  
The first practice session was over and Ranma had been given a chance to see how the machine worked. He could only think of one thing that even compared to this machine and it didn't really come close. During that two week stint he had spent stuck as a girl because of the cat's tongue Cologne had once given him she had set up that area at the festival where all those spirit like things had tried to distract him. This had included that monkey dressed in clothing to attack him physically as well. That was the closest he could come to describing something that came even the tiniest bit close to the Danger Room. Wolverine's fight had started out easy enough, but it had slowly gotten more and more dangerous as the Sentinels had adapted to Wolverine's presence.   
  
The fight had been a lot of fun to watch, but he understood that there was a bit of danger involved when it came to this Danger Room, Wolverine had taken quite a beating from those last Sentinel creatures, coming out of it covered in large bruises and cuts that seemed to close up and vanish as Ranma watched him. Like Wolverine, Ranma had entered the main room and found himself standing in the middle of the large empty area and waiting for Beast to pick out a program to run him through. He'd already been told that going up against the Sentinels would have to wait for later since Beast wanted to test him out on something a little bit easier and work his way up from there. That was fine with Ranma, he hadn't fought a whole bunch of opponents, one after another in some time. The last time he had done that was against an entire dojo full of students a couple of years back while over in China, he'd won, but it had taken every trick and sneaky attack he had available to do it.  
  
Ranma knew that the whole place would change before his eyes when things started and he was kind of curious just how real it would be when things got underway. When he was learning the Hiruu Shoten Ha technique the old ghoul had taught him how to feel the world around him so that he could feel the change in temperature needed for the technique, it had the side effect of allowing him to 'see' the world in a ways that he hadn't been able to before. Now as he spent a few seconds running through some stretches to make sure he was ready for the upcoming fight he was getting curious, what would the room look like with that new sense, then he watched in fascination at the whole room shimmered and changed before his eyes as it turned into a large fighting arena, across from him was a man in a simple white gi in a fighting stance. He was about 5'5 or so, thin but muscular and looked more than a little like Bruce Lee.  
  
"Ranma, this is a random combat sim set to test your skills, it will start out slow and be pretty simple at first, but as you go along the program will rate your skills and adapt to match them." Beast said over the intercom.  
  
"Alright, this looks like fun."  
  
"Are you ready?"  
  
"Sure; is this actually Bruce Lee?"  
  
"Just a computer representation of him that we whipped up once for a bit of fun."  
  
"Cool, lets go for it." Ranma said and grinned as he smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand.  
  
Suddenly Bruce came to life and stepped forward with a loud 'Whaaaaaaaa!!" and launched himself forward. Ranma twitched his body to avoid a punch and frowned a little, he'd seen enough Bruce Lee movies to know that the guy was faster than this, but Beast had said this would get harder and harder as the fight went on so he figured he would wait until things picked up before he really started to go. He certainly hoped this guy would get faster or this was going to be one boring fight. Moving with relative ease Ranma blocked Lee's multiple attacks and kept on the defensive as he studied his opponent. Up in the booth Beast sighed as Wolverine laughed at the look of boredom on Ranma's face. Beast tapped a nearby dial to kick the danger setting up several levels.  
  
"Told you Ranma could take a higher setting than that." Logan growled out.  
  
"I know, but had to make sure he wasn't giving us a lot of bull about his skills."  
  
"I can judge a good fighter just by looking at them fur ball, Ranma has skills he hasn't even tapped yet, he does things should pick up."  
  
"Well let's find out just what he has to give." Beast said.  
  
Bruce Lee flipped over Ranma and landed in a relaxed stance and 'paused' for a second before he suddenly started to fight with a lot more skill and power. Ranma almost sighed with relief as the challenge increased and unconsciously started to mimic Bruce's current skill level and retaliate on a whole new level. Trading blows at an increased rate they started to move all over the floor, pushing each other to perform techniques and skills that only full level masters could pull off. Ranma had learned quite a bit about Bruce Lee's style of fighting over the years and he knew that this fake version wasn't even close to the real thing yet, but it was better than fighting that mindless copy cat drone he had started out with. He grinned as the skill level increased suddenly, by a factor of four or more, this was more like what he was expecting when he started this and they started to blur, their blows moving so fast that the human eye couldn't even keep up.  
  
"Whaaaaaaaaa!!" Bruce Lee screamed and went into some pretty impressive aerial attacks.  
  
Ducking and weaving Ranma just rolled his eyes and continued to block and test the copy's defenses, Bruce's true level of skill was starting to finally show up, but his vocabulary was a bit one sided. With a shrug Ranma exploded into an attack he used against Ryoga every now and then, three blows to Bruce's stomach, chest, and chin sent him sprawling to the floor where he vanished in a swirl of light, this caught Ranma by surprise. He figured that he would be fighting Bruce Lee through the whole test, was it done already?   
  
"Is that it?"  
  
"Hold on Ranma, that was the limit of that sim's capacities. Let me get your next opponent ready for battle."  
  
"Bring it on!" Ranma said as he relaxed a little and looked around to see where the next attacker would come from, then he spotted another figure as it formed nearby. He didn't recognize this one, he was wearing one of those ridiculous spandex uniforms though. It was an all black body suit, kind of like a ninja would wear, but this was more glossy and form fitting than anything else. He even had a series of weapons on his back with a small pack, Ranma could tell that this guy had some interesting skills just from the way he was kneeling on the floor waiting to go into action. If the guy was a ninja they usually had ways to sit down and kneel for days at a time and always be ready for battle in an instant's notice, Ranma recognized this guy's stance.  
  
There was no reaction when the sim started this time, no flicker of light or slight pause, just one second the guy was frozen in place, the next he was in motion. Ranma ducked as the guy pulled his sword and attempted to behead him with a lightning fast attack. It brought back memories of his morning fights with Kuno when he had first come across those magical swords, this guy's skill felt the same, the sword was running the fight and the guy had nothing to say about it but to hold the sword and do as the sword said. This guy was a couple of levels higher skill wise than Bruce had been so he charged a bit more Ki into his body and used the Amaguriken to tap several hundred attacks into the guys wrists, arms, and chest, to weaken his grip on the sword, lock his muscles, and mess with his breathing. The instant he dropped the sword Ranma straight punched him the forehead and knock him out, sending the body flying backwards. The body faded even before he hit the ground and Ranma bounced back a few feet and waited for the next attacker to show up.  
  
The room itself flickered and changed before his eyes this time, taking on the look of a city, he seemed to be standing on the sidewalk, but there were no people around as far as he could see. Ranma wasn't sure what was going on, but Beast hadn't given him a warning this time so it meant he probably had to deal with this threat with no warning at all...  
  
**********  
  
Rogue rummaged through the fridge and pulled out whatever she could find to eat, they seemed to be out of or very low on most of the main ingredients for everything. She knew Ranma had eaten earlier, but she didn't think the girl would have been able to eat enough food for over a dozen people in one sitting. From the looks of things she had been wrong, there was bread for sandwiches, but no cheese and half a piece of lunch meat. Who in the world ate half a piece of lunch meat and put the other half back in the fridge? The jar of mayonnaise was mostly empty, yet she remembered buying a new one less than three days ago. Well she would have to improvise a little, that meant using odd things for toppings, it wouldn't be the first time that's for sure.  
  
Ten minutes later she had two sandwiches made up, they both had a tiny amount of mayonnaise, then came the half a piece of lunch meat, some micro waved chicken stripped off the bone, cheese, lettuce, and pickles. She didn't normally eat pickles, but when one had to improvise, pickles did the trick and at least they weren't hot, those were just gross. Wandering into the front room she sat down to watch TV with the rest of the team, for some reason the last month had been incredibly boring. There hadn't been a rogue mutant attack, Magneto hadn't resurfaced, Cain Marko hadn't come by for a visit as the Juggernaut, nothing to speak of. Even the news had commented on how quite it had been lately, the Avengers and FF4 were starting to prove they could have normal lives again.   
  
Wolverine had just returned from one of his runs through the Canadian woods where he had a cabin that he visited whenever he felt like getting away from everything. Then Beast and Storm had been in Japan to visit friends and advance science a little more, they still didn't really know what to think of this Ranma person they had brought back with them. Bishop was on edge and kept making patrols around the property muttering about targets and a glare in his grouchy eye, she was beginning to wonder if he had ever had a day off in his life. Even Gambit had decided to vanish for a while, Rogue missed him, but figured he would be back to pester her eventually. Rogue had no clue where Scott and Jean had been running off to every few days, but they just took off and returned some time later with silly grins plastered to their faces that let everyone know what they had been up to. This was the first time in three or four weeks when all of them had been in the mansion together, something was in there air, she could feel it.  
  
"What did you think of Ranma, Rogue?" Storm asked.  
  
"He seems normal enough, though that power of his is hard to adapt to."  
  
"Power?" Bishop asked.  
  
"Ranma can change from one sex to the other with hot or cold water, it's an amazing thing to see."  
  
"A shape changer? Are there any other forms he can take?" Scott asked.  
  
"Not that I know of, he seems to prefer his male form though. It's about twice the size of the female form y'all met earlier." Rogue said.  
  
"Interesting, what did he look like?" Asked Jean.  
  
"Like a male form of that girl, he has black hair and tons of well defined muscles. He said he'd been training in martial arts for close to ten years and you can see it in the way he moves, almost like Bishop here does when he's stalking someone."  
  
Bishop raised and eyebrow and tried to recall if that girl had moved like that, he didn't want to admit that the only thing he could remember was how well Rogue's uniform fit on her body. He grunted.  
  
"Where is he right now? Still with McCoy down in the Danger room?"  
  
"Yeah, it should be a while yet, remember how long our first time in room took."  
  
"True, true..."  
  
**********  
  
Chad wasn't sure what was going on, but he knew he was in trouble and had been on the streets to long not to recognize the signs. For over a year now he had been homeless, even held down a part time job to make some money, but was never able to get enough in his pocket to claw his way off the streets. No less than an hour ago he had been sitting down at a local dinner to eat lunch when his survival instincts had warned him of something. At first he had ignored them, he was in the middle of a dinner after all, but as he sat there finishing off a burger it had grown steadily worse. Something had been watching him, but looking around the dinner hadn't helped and there was no one outside that looked suspicious enough to make him think they were doing it. He'd kept his thoughts to himself and quickly finished his meal, the sooner he got somewhere more protected the easier it would be to hide.   
  
For a second he even considered going to police, but they wouldn't do anything to help him, he was homeless after all so they wouldn't even care. They never did anything to help out people like him, they ran them off to keep them form bothering people. He had once heard the Police didn't protect people, they weren't allowed to think for themselves, instead they protected the Constitution. That was why Lawyers had so much power, one little mistake and they could get a mass murderer off on some tiny little technicality and be proud of themselves at the same time. He considered going to a local homeless shelter, but those places were a little to seedy for his tastes, the workers there were always acting funny and those guys that did get a bed for the night sometimes disappeared. There had to be some place he could go, but where? After a few minutes thought he stepped outside and headed uptown, towards the nice areas of town, where the cops were more prevalent. He may not have trusted cops, but they would help to keep this jerk off his back if they happened to see anything.  
  
Half an hour later he didn't care about the cops, he didn't care that he didn't trust them, all he wanted to do was find one so they could use those guns of theirs on the thing following him. He was currently he was running down an alley deep in the lower part of mid town, he'd been diverted from going somewhere safe and almost herded through the maze of alleys and streets that were so crime ridden that even the police tried to avoid the place if they could. It was no secret that monsters lived down here, he had met a few of them here and there and learned to stay away from them if he wanted to stay alive. Now one of them was after him for unknown reasons and didn't even know what he'd done to provoke this thing.  
  
As far as he knew he was up to date paying off the local gangs for protection, that was where most of his money went, but if this wasn't there normal way those bastards handled things. This was something different and it was out to get him for some unknown reason, it had come out of nowhere and started to chase him in broad daylight like it was no big deal. He had to get some help, but to do that he had to get away from it then he could get to safety. As Chad ran he glanced over his shoulder and saw a large shadow like thing running along behind him, moving with a silent gait that was almost to eerie to describe. He had a feeling it was mutant, but this was the first one he had ever met that acted like this, normally they were just ugly freak.   
  
This thing wasn't like that at all, it was cloaked in shadows and hard to see as it moved. That meant he had to be doubly careful or he felt that he would be it's next...victim. He didn't bother to yell as he ran, it was a bad idea to attract attention down in this area. This thing would only kill him, there were worse fates for those stupid enough to attract attention from the wrong people. He ran out of the alley and barely even noticed as he ran out into one of the busier streets and past several cars, dodging through traffic, Chad ran for his life.  
  
Behind him the shadow monster burst out of the alley and landed on the roof of a taxi parked at the side of the street. It's claws dug into the metal of the hood as the car rocked back and forth under it's weight and looked around with glowing eyes. It was like a gargoyle, an evil looking form with clawed wings and a stone like skin that had massive looking claws at the ends of it's hands and feet that seemed to be shredding the very metal of the Taxi was made out of like it was paper. It spotted Chad in the distance and with an inhuman screech spread a its wings and launched into the air. The Taxi and it's driver were nearly killed as it's powerful leg muscles came close to flipping over on it's side, there were claw marks all over the hood that exposed parts of the engine to the air. The driver had fainted when it landed on the hood.   
  
It flapped its wings several times to gain height and sent shocked citizens running and screaming from their cars in a panic as it glided after Chad from about twenty feet above the street. Chaos and fear followed in it's wake as the 'herd' ran for it, to the monster it was a giant smorgasbord of easy prey, but it had set it's eye on this one first and would take it down first and foremost. It had a limited intelligence, but knew enough about it's prey to know that they liked to hide from danger like rabbits. Screeching in joy it took a bit of delight as it's victim ran from it, glorying in the thrill of the hunt and wondered if this one would be as much fun as it's last play toy.  
  
Seconds before all this happened traffic had been moving alone quite nicely with no delays, but now with all the abandoned cars and the fleeing wave of humanity it was dead locked for miles with people running for their lives in all directions. Chad didn't care about all this, all he wanted to do was get away, he just ran and dodged around cars where he could, weaving through panicked mindless mob all about him as they scrambling for very their lives. He spotted a large truck in the distance with a flatbed trailer holding something large under a dark gray tarp. There were soldiers on and around the trailer with large weapons ready to protect whatever was under the tarp, the panicked mob had divided in half around as they ran and the soldiers looked to be on edge. Chad had once been in the Army, a very long time ago, and knew that these guys would be trigger happy if that cargo was important enough. He ducked around a car and attempted to get far enough away from the truck to keep these guys from shooting him, but his luck ran out as the thing flying above him dived suddenly with it's claws spread out to impale him through the shoulder.  
  
He screamed in pain as he is slammed against the trunk of the car, the thing sets it's feet on his legs and digs in some claws there as well. Chad cursed as all the claws sliced through his body with incredible ease, but that wasn't the worst thing. The worst was a half second later when he felt his life being sucked out of him, it had to be the most painful thing he had ever felt in his life and he screamed to let everyone know it. No one stopped to help, that would have endangered them too and everyone knows how selfish people are in a situation like this, everybody for themselves. A little ways away the soldiers had pulled the tarp off the trailer to reveal a large energy weapon of some kind, the CO jumped in the seat and charged the weapons computers as he'd been shown how. A Godzilla fan would have compared it to the Lazer Cannon used in the earlier movies, but that was where the similarities ended. It lifted up and took aim at the monster in the midst of killing, the dish that made up it's front end flared with electricity, and fired a few seconds later.  
  
The beam that fired out lanced through several cars before it hit the monster, it was just turning to see where the strange light was coming from as it screamed in pain and was literally ripped to pieces, of course Chad was in the way, but the death of one human was always an acceptable loss to kill a mutant. Sentinels had proven that time and again as they hunted down mutants that couldn't defend themselves. Chad hadn't stopped screaming yet, so this pain was added to his own as the world turned white. Then the unexpected happened, they were near the back end of a car that was catching the flare off of the Lazer energy. So of course as the paint melted and ruptured the car's gas tank the just had to explode right underneath them, it was the last thing the monster ever saw, but for Chad it was a different story altogether. The monster died in the giant ball of fire the explosion created, Chad on the other hand turned out to be a Neo Mutant, a normal human that had an inactivated mutant gene. He had no clue that the Government had tried several times to expose him to things, during his stint in the army, in an effort to activate it. He had no clue that that he was even a Neo Mutant, all he knew was that the world was suddenly...different than it had been and he was suddenly scared.   
  
No one ever found his body.  
  
**********  
  
The basic definition of a Danger Room was someplace to test one's skills in controlled conditions. To Ranma that didn't matter, to him it was like some kind large real life video game that could test even his skills. The pile of shattered and broken robots was nearly hip deep and covered most of the room as Ranma wadded through them with a single mindedness that only Wolverine could understand. This had started out as a test to see what level he fought at, but as things went along Beast had been forced to toss in certain surprises and traps to keep Ranma occupied. Ranma's aura was flaring wildly as he battled stronger and stronger opponents and was giving off some strange shadows. He was currently in the middle of a pack of robots as they tried to take him down, but he elbow smashed one of them into scrap metal and body slammed anther into the floor and smashed it to pieces in one fluid motion.   
  
These weren't the holographic solid light constructs they had started out with at the beginning, but full fledged combat droids that the X-men used to train their powers when the hard light holograms couldn't do the job. They used alien technology to adapt to their opponents during every fight to make themselves more effective. Ranma didn't know any of this, all he knew was that he could smash them and not worry about hurting anyone when he used his full abilities. He was in heaven, never had he been challenged like this and allowed to let loose with all he had to give. There wasn't one fight in the last few years that he hadn't been forced to hold back for fear of hurting someone permanently, well except Saffron of course, but he'd been a god.   
  
At times Ryoga would give him a challenge, but he hadn't done anything really major in a long time now. Not since he developed his Shi Shi Hokudan and ever since then his depression and hatred had been getting really out of control, he rarely even cared about hurting an innocent in their fights because of it. He shook his head to clear it as he barely dodged a palm blast that would have scorched his shoulder, grabbed it's wrist and yanked it forward to shatter it's chest cavity with a well placed blow with his other hand and a burst of Ki that blew it to pieces seconds later. Spinning around he brought his leg up and wheel kicked the next robot in the chin, Ki blasted a third one, and ripped a fourth one to shreds with his bare hands.   
Then a blow to his back sent him flying towards a nearby wall with a grunt of pain, he spun around in mid air and bounced off the wall and into the air. Standing behind him was another robot, but this one was looked kind of like a T-100 series from Terminator, it was a kind of robotic skeleton covered in bright silver chrome and had red glowing eyes. Ranma didn't have much more time to think about it as it jumped into the air after him and started to attack him with hand to hand martial arts attacks. The rest of the robots had just attacked him in one large mass and kept it up until they were all used up, this one seemed to be of a whole different breed, it knew martial arts. Ranma picked up the intensity of his attack and tore into the thing, but it blocked or took everything he had to throw at it. Then it started attacking him and Ranma knew he was in trouble as a lucky shot took him across the jaw and sent him sailing across the room to slam into a pile of broken robots.  
  
He was back on his feet in an instant, but in that short time was all the skeletal like thing needed to jump after him and land just as he was on his feet. An elbow to his solar plexus blew all the air out of his lungs, but he was a trained fighter with his cheating old man as a teacher. Rolling with the blow instinctively he took the opportunity to use the force of the blow to spin him around and strike the thing across the jaw with the back of his hand. It's head snapped to the side with a loud clang sound and staggered it back a couple of feet as Ranma used the time to leap backwards, gather his Ki and fire a blast out of his hands. This was only the second time he'd used his Ki lately and it was still acting a bit strange, instead of the spiritual like energy that he usually collected in his hands, this was a ball of bright blue energy that fired out as a solid beam of destruction.  
  
The robot took the blast right in it's stomach area and was blown across the room and into one of the piles, the beam was strong enough to melt some of them. Since the air had been knocked out of his lungs, he couldn't maintain it like he should have and a few seconds later, while gasping for air, the beam died and he dropped to his knees. Ranma staggered to his feet and controlled his breathing like he'd been taught, he knew that blast wouldn't have been enough to stop that thing, but he had hurt it. Off in the distance he was surprised when the pile of scrap shifted and the thing threw off several metallic bodies as it stood up and turned those glowing red eyes on him.   
  
"Heh, who would have thought fighting a terminator would be so much fun, this is great." Ranma muttered to himself.  
  
Kicking bodies out of it's way the thing stomped towards him with every intention of putting him down, but Ranma had no intention of giving up just because this thing was nearly indestructible. Now that he had his breathing back under control he focused on his Ki and formed a couple of small balls of light in both of his hands as he waited for the thing to get just a little closer. When it was ten feet away he brought his hands forward, combined both balls of energy, and fired out a massive amount of energy. It may have been a little to much as a few seconds later the whole area exploded. A wave of heat and pure force rammed into him and threw him the length of the room and slammed him into the wall, he slid to the floor as everything went black for a few seconds.   
  
Throwing off the blow he forced himself to come to his feet, but instantly wished he hadn't done so as he watched a robotic silhouette limping out of the fire storm his blast had created. Even the walls were cracked and he could see scorch marks on the ceiling, but he didn't have much time to think as the robot jumped at him. Growling in anger Ranma jumped at it, they met in mid air and were instantly fighting again, this time Ranma wasn't holding back and the dents his fists left on it's metal hide were good examples of his skill in the Art. That didn't stop the damned thing though and within seconds Ranma was receiving his own beating as they bounced off the floor, the robot was controlling the fight now and there wasn't a thing Ranma could do about it.  
  
As his anger built Ranma came up with a plan and smirked, he had a bloody lip, but it looked cool. He was fighting this thing the wrong way, they were known for being nearly unbeatable under normal situations. This thing was designed to take on mutants, people with large amounts of power to back themselves up with and he knew he wasn't using his full power yet, just his Ki. For a second he considered using a couple of Vacuum Blades, but decided that he wasn't in enough danger to call on those sealed moves just yet. He had that other stuff to draw on now and this seemed like a good time to see if he could us it directly instead of with his Ki. Ranma stopped his attack, used the thing's head as a jumping board and jumped as far away as he could get. When he landed a few seconds later he turned around and started to concentrate as hard as he could, a bright blue aura enveloped him and filled the room. He opened his eyes and was apparent that his power was leaking out of them as sparkles of power started to go off around them, his hair shifted around and started waving under the power of his aura as he grinned.  
  
That had been a lot easier than he thought it would be.  
  
He yelled as he used this new power of his to move faster than he ever had before, streaking across the Danger Room and attacking the robot as fast he could make himself go. He didn't hear the deafening sounds his fists and feet made as they pounded the robot, nor did he notice the floor below him cracking and shifting below his feet, all he could see was the robot as he pummeled it into a pile of twitching scrap metal with his bare hands. Then with one mighty overhand swing he brought his fists down on top of the thing's head as hard had he could, there was a loud clang of metal and a giant explosion that engulfed him an instant later and sent him flying across the room. He slammed into the ceiling and plowed through it in a shower of sparks and smoke as they crumpled around his body.  
  
"You kid, you awake yet or do we have to get you to the med center?"  
  
When he came to, Ranma wasn't sure what was going on for a few seconds. He was upside down and hanging over the center of the Danger Room, there was a ladder near his head and Wolverine was prodding him in the chest with a finger. "Huh?"  
  
"You okay kid?"  
  
Ranma up his body and saw that his flight through the ceiling had found tons of wires and little gadget, he was hanging by one foot tangled in some wires about twenty foot off the floor. "What's going on?" Ranma asked.  
  
"You won, though you destroyed most of the Danger Room to do so, haven't had that happen on a long time."  
  
"Why are you upside down?"  
  
"Your a little out of it, but you don't seem to have taken any serous injuries other than some bruises and small cuts here and there."  
  
"Um...help me down would you? Or get out of the way and I'll just drop to the floor from here, it isn't that high."  
  
"Naw, Beast would get mad at me if I did that. He thinks you were trying to kill yourself with the way you were fighting those robots, I know better, but he doesn't understand us fighters."  
  
Nodding, Ranma pulled himself up to grab the wires above him and worked his trapped leg free, swung around and lowered his feet onto the top of the ladder. Wolverine helped him balance as they climbed down to the floor. There were small robots moving all over the room cleaning up the mess and performing repairs, Ranma was a bit surprised that he had caused this much damage to a room designed to keep super powered people from losing their fighting edge. The door to the room opened to admit Beast, Wolverine was putting the ladder up in one of the nearby cubbyholes built into the walls of the room. He looked a bit shocked at what he'd just seen Ranma do during his workout and evaluation. That was probably why he was holding his ever present clip board scribbling down notes. He was just finishing this as Wolverine came back, tossed Ranma a towel to dry off a little, and lit up another cigar.   
  
"Where did you learn to fight like that Ranma?" Beast asked.  
  
"Ten years on the road Dr. McCoy."  
  
"Well you are an exemplary fighter, there are very few people who could fight you straight on with just skill, you might even be on par with some of the best in the world. Most of us in the team are considered high level black belts, but you could out fight most of us in hand to hand combat with little problem."  
  
Ranma smirks. "I'm the best."  
  
"On the other hand you have several areas that you need to work on yet, your over confidence for one. If you don't curb that attitude of yours it will get you into trouble one of these days."  
  
"Hmph! I'm the best there is."  
  
Holding up his clip board Beast nods and takes a few more notes. "Over the last couple of hours we have been testing you to make sure you were back in full health, you have proven to me that you have several very powerful and amazing abilities. First is your ability to change sex..."  
  
"It's a curse!!"   
  
"It's still an ability Ranma, there's no reason to get mad about it, after the curse comes your martial arts abilities. You seem to have the ability to access what you call Ki to make yourself faster, stronger, and harder to damage. It manifests around your body as a blue aura of some kind that you use to produce blasts of energy from your hands and to manipulate the elements to create an artificial tornado as you showed us earlier when those robots started using flame throwers on you. That was quite an amazing thing to see, you nearly destroyed the room when you did it, luckily we have gotten used to Storm creating small thunder storms in here and learned how to adapt the room to contain them."  
  
"That sounds about right..."  
  
"Well after analyzing you for the last two hours and taking readings I think we have a pretty good idea what you are capable of doing. Our scanners were telling me that your energy levels are very similar to what Cyclops uses when he fights, except that your energy is a lot more focused and controlled than his is." Beast frowns. "I wonder if this means Cyclops could learn to control his optic blast?"  
  
"It's just Ki Doc, of course he can learn to control it."  
  
Beast sighed, Scott's ability to control his blasts was a long standing argument. "I'm going to have to sit you down and explain to you the difference between your Ki and a Mutant Power Ranma, they are quite different from each other."  
  
"Not really Doc, Ki is the energy a body produces, kind of like a life force. All these mutants you keep talking about just seem to be normal humans to me that have more Ki than they should. It's a little hard to describe, you seem to have a low level of Ki available right now, yet your outer form is changed. This curse I have gives me a different look of the world, I change into a girl, Taro changes into a giant monstrous thing, and even Ryoga turns into a tiny black pig. It's a change in form and nothing much to worry about, its the person you're fighting that you have to worry about. Cyclops should be able to physically control his power, the fact that he doesn't tells me that he just hasn't tried."  
  
"One eye tries all the time." Wolverine mutters through a cloud of smoke.  
  
"Does he? Or did he give up trying a long time ago when he was given those glasses he wears?"  
  
"What do you mean Ranma?" Beast asks.  
  
"I mean that those glasses of his are a weakness, something my old man would never have allowed me to live with. Once he got those glasses he stopped trying to control his power and started to depend on them to hold his power in check, get rid of those glasses and he will be forced to adapt and control that power."  
  
"Actually we can't do that, his power fires out of his eyes and if nothing stops it he could levels this whole city in a matter of minutes. That is to dangerous to take his glasses away, there has to be a way to do it while he is wearing his glasses." Beast pointed out.  
  
"I'd suggest some heavy meditation to strengthen his mind to the same point as his body, when they are in balance, then controlling his power will be easy to do."  
  
"Ol'Cyclops would dispute that kid, but who knows if he will do it or not, we'll see if he's tried it before."  
  
"That's cool, so what will we be doing to get me used to the differences of this dimension?"  
  
"Schooling most likely, read a few books and let you visit New York if you want, that shouldn't be that big of a problem."  
  
"Ah man, I hate school! Isn't there some other way?" Ranma whined.  
  
"Nope! Now let's get to your room and get changed out of those clothes."  
  
After heading to his room, taking another shower and heading down stairs in a new pair of clothes Ranma decided to step outside and look around for a bit. He had been an outdoors person all his life, being cooped up inside the house, even one as big as the mansion, made him nervous enough to want to go outside for a while. With his senses functioning the way they usually did when he was in a strange place he was able to scan the whole property to pin point where all the people where. Most of them were in the house still watching TV, but he was picking up someone out in the woods moving around. Ranma blinked in surprise and concentrated on this person and realized it must have been Bishop since he hadn't sensed the guy in the house. He seemed to be practicing some badly developed stealth techniques and broadcasting Ki like a small bonfire. He stood out like a sore thumb and Ranma realized that he knew of at least four or five techniques from various schools that would have worked a bit better than the one this guy was using. Ranma narrowed his eyes and recalled that so far this guy had treated him with barely suppressed hostility and a lot of distrust, after dealing with the idiots in Nerima for so long he didn't want to be anyone's punching bag again and this guy seemed to have the same baseless distrust everyone seemed to have against him. Ranma didn't like that at all and wanted to show the guy just what he could do and just maybe get the guy to loosen up a little, he grinned as and idea came to him.  
  
Cloaking himself in the Umisen-Ken and vanishing from sight, Ranma jumped off the porch and ran into the woods right for Bishop. Ranma failed to see the astonished look on Beast's face from where he was watching from a nearby window, grab his clip board and make yet another note and shake his head. Then he ran off to tell Professor Xavier about this latest development, this kid was just making one astonishing act after another. For a non-mutant the kid was very skilled and enough of a threat that they would have to keep an eye on him. Out in the woods Ranma slowed to a walk and made a bit of noise to let Bishop hear him.  
  
"Come out of the woods now!" Bishop snarled and pointed a huge gun in Ranma's general direction.  
  
"It's just me." Ranma said as he stepped out from behind the tree he was standing behind.  
  
"What are you doing out here?"  
  
"Just exploring to see what's around this place."  
  
"Ah, well go away I was working on something."  
  
"I know, a bad stealth technique."  
  
"HOW IN THE WORLD..." Bishop started to yell.  
  
Ranma snorted and crossed his arms with a smirk. "I spent over ten years having every technique ever known beat into my head and stealth techniques were a major part of the style." He had to bite off saying that cheap shots, low blows, and cheating were the other part of it, Anything Goes and all that.  
  
"I am a fully trained member of the XSE and they used the best moves of all the martial arts..."  
  
"Yeah right, if that was so you could do this." Ranma said and used the Umisen-ken to vanish before Bishops eyes.  
  
"So you can turn invisible, I've seen plenty of mutants that could do that and they always give themselves away."   
  
"True." Ranma's voice said from all around Bishop. "But this particular technique covers that little handicap."  
  
Glaring around Bishop went through all of his senses looking for Ranma, he couldn't hear him moving, there were no foot steps in the grass, hell he couldn't even smell the kid. He concentrated on an aspect of his power that he didn't use all that often and focused on catching the energy signatures Ranma was putting out, but he wasn't anywhere to be seen. That was quite a surprise, even Wolverine could be seen when he did this, but Ranma wasn't anywhere to be seen. He grunted in respect of the technique, it was quite impressive and put anything he knew to shame. "Alright, I'm impressed, you can stop now."  
  
Nothing happened.  
  
'Where did the little punk go?' Bishop wondered to himself, reaching down to his belt Bishop touched something odd. He looked down and had to back up in shock, his clothing was gone, his shirt, spandex, belt, boots, his gun, everything but his boxers and a little yellow sticky note saying they were to gross to touch. His eyes turned red with fury as he started to growl, as his anger grew, so did the energy his body contained as it formed an aura of sparkling power around him. "RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNMMMMMAAAAAAAAA!!!" Bishop screamed as a wave of energy formed around his body and exploded outward and leveled a couple of trees. He moved though the smoke and dust, his eyes trailing energy sparks as he ran to catch up with little punk that had done this to him. "GRHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"  
  
Once Bishop was out of the area Ranma reappeared with a smirk and looked at the bundle of clothes he had in his hands. He chuckled and wondered how the guy had been able to carry so many weapons in that skin tight outfit, sure he had the belt pouches and a couple of other things, but over all he seemed to have way more than that suit should have been able to hide. The guy was like one of those Klingons from TV, mean, tough, carried around way to many weapons, and full of threats. Ranma felt like laughing evilly, but decided that a joke like this had to be played just right and an evil laugh wouldn't do it. Ever since learning the sealed techniques from the old man he had been perfecting it when he could, oh sure he had every intention of sealing his father's techniques, but all he had to do was improve them a bit and they would be his own techniques to use as he wanted.   
  
Boy had he learned to adapt them over the last few months, his father's version had only worked on keeping people from seeing him and moving really fast. Ranma figured he had improved on it by hiding things like smell and any visible signs a person might leave behind. It was The Way of the Silent Thief after all and stealing things with it was child's play, he always found little uses for it, like spying on Nabiki when she wasn't paying attention. Ranma listened for the sound of Bishop entering the mansion, he could just pictured the kicking down or shattering the back door and stalking into the main room where everybody was watching TV while he's walks in wearing those pokadot in his boxers. It was like playing with Ryoga, the temper and everything, though this guy seemed to have a little more in his head than Ryoga did.  
  
"So now what?" Ranma mumbled to himself.  
  
"I'd suggest not returning to the mansion for several days."  
  
Spinning around Ranma was surprised to see Beast hanging from a branch. "What do you mean? It was only a little joke and he was getting on my nerves with all that snarling and death threats."  
  
"Bishop is very high strung and very likely to shoot you on sight now, he spent several days trying to kill Wolverine just last month."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Wolverine cut some strangely placed holes in all his clothing..."  
  
"Oh, I wish I had thought of that, I'm tired of that guy growling at me like I'm going to be his next meal, I've barely known him for a few hours now and won't even give me a chance to prove myself."  
  
"Well you be careful, he holds a grudge, that was a pretty good joke though." Beast said with a grin. "Just like something Bobby would have pulled off when he was living here."  
  
"Bobby?"  
  
"He was known as Ice Man and had the ability to pull moisture out of the air and turn it into ice. He was pretty young when he joined the X-Men and tended to be a practical joker."  
  
"I don't pull them all the much, but when I do it's usually for a pretty good reason and that jerk needed to be brought down a peg or two."  
  
"Well you just be careful, Bishop isn't known for having much of a sense of humor."  
  
"Yeah sure, he can't lay a hand on me anyway."  
  
"Oh, ha ha, well I wanted to ask you how you pulled that little trick. You didn't mention it when we were going over your abilities earlier."  
  
Ranma shrugged. "I used my Ki, it has lots of uses, I just have to find a way to apply it and I can usually do something."  
  
"Well you can turn invisible, make tornados, punch faster than Quicksilver, and bench press about ten tons with this Ki, is there anything else?"  
  
"Sure, there are several things."  
  
"Can you fly?"  
  
"Fly?"  
  
Beast nodded and dropped to the ground. "Yes, several members of our team can fly. Like you saw Rogue do earlier when you were with Charles."  
  
"I saw a guy once lift himself off the ground and hover in place for a while, but I wouldn't call that flying. Though he had this plunge and attack maneuver down to an art."  
  
"Well from seeing your abilities I think you might have enough power to fly as well, have you ever attempted this technique you were describing?"  
  
"Sure, I've done it a couple of times when I was practicing on some of my secret techniques, even improved it a little, but it sucks up Ki so fast that I can only maintain it for about thirty seconds or so and it's more of a hover than flying."  
  
"How about we make a deal Ranma." Beast said with a weird grin.  
  
"A deal? For what?" Now Ranma was confused, this guy kept jumping from one subject to another in the blink of an eye.  
  
"You my friend have made me grow curious about you, your powers and abilities are way above the norm for a regular human and easily make you one of the toughest fighters around. I've never met a human that could do what you can without a special suit or corporate backing of some kind. So here's the deal, you let me run tests on you to understand your abilities, and I'll ask Jean to telepathically educate you about all the ins and outs of this dimension or at least give you hand coping with things. This will give you an education on mutants, a run down on the types of mutants that are out there and the ones that the general public knows about. Deal?"  
  
"What kinds of tests?"  
  
"Anything and everything for about two weeks, I can perform enough to get a better handle on this Ki you are using, come up with some ways to improve your abilities, teach you how to work with our team and to fight some of the other members of the team one at a time and all at once, and anything else I can think of."  
  
Beast looked down at Ranma and his glasses gleamed with suppressed scientific need, he even heard the 'gleeeeeem' sound effect from somewhere. Ignoring the fact that a sixfoot ape like creature with blue fur, large teeth, and wearing a lab coat was making the offer that would allow him to learn everything he needed to survive here, Ranma wasn't sure he wanted to be poked and prodded for two straight weeks before he could earn any kind of freedom from this place. It was a good deal though and it had several advantages he liked as well, he knew the guy wouldn't kill him and if it was anything like the experiments that Tofu had performed on him every now and then he could survive them with only a little bit of discomfort.  
  
Suddenly a nearby tree exploded as Bishop wandered back into the clearing and pointed a giant gun Ranma's head, the man was still in his underwear and looked like he wanted to kill someone. "RRRRRRRAAAAAAAANNNNNNMMMMMMMAAAAA!!!! DIE!!!!!!!!"  
  
Ranma and Beast had to dive for cover as the enraged man pulled the trigger and fired off a bolt of super heated plasma energy that vaporized some of the nearby trees in a giant fire ball.  
  
"WHUUUMP!!!"   
  
Running for one's life is an acquired art, one that Ranma had perfected over the year whenever his old man had screwed up or stolen something. There was always someone on their tail, bounty hunters, police, irate tavern keepers, bouncers, priests, demons, you name it Ranma had run from it. He even remembered running from an enraged purple haired Amazon that liked to use the strangers weapons, running from Bishop was worse because he was firing a weapon that could level a house in one shot. A two story house. He cursed when one of Bishops blasts got a little to close and the shock wave picked him and sent him flying right over a nearby hill by about twenty feet.   
  
Splash!!  
  
Gasping for air and female, Ranma found herself in a lake that she hadn't noticed in her head long run from the madman, okay maybe she had gone a bit to far to show the guy up, but he had deserved it. The sound of dirt rolling down hill and into the water nearby made her look up to see Bishop as he snarled, in his underwear, holding a giant gun to his shoulder while standing at the top of a small rise that Ranma had flown over. The barrel of the weapon was glowing and the enraged look of evil on the guy's face was quite a sight to see. Ranma gulped and wadded back a few feet as she wondered if she might have gone just little bit to far with her joke.  
  
"It w-was just a j-joke…"   
  
"Now you DIE!!" Bishop snarled.  
  
"Oh I wouldn't say that." Ranma then said with a smirk as she dog paddles back a bit more.  
  
Bishop growled and Ranma could almost feel the man's finger tensing on the trigger, she leaned back a little just as she brought her hands together and shoved them forward to sent a shark shaped wave of water right up the barrel of Bishop's gun and knocked the man off his feet. She dove under water and swam for all she was worth, behind her Bishop's gun crashed to the ground and sparked for several seconds as it died. He rolled back to his feet with his eyes sparking with energy and fired a blast of energy from his hands at the red head swimming across the lake. He grinned as it hit her and exploded, sending a pillar of water high into the air and shock waves in all directions.  
  
"Bishop if you've killed him I'll..."  
  
"SHUT UP!!!!!!!" Bishop screamed in Beast's face, loud enough to make his hair stream out behind him. "HE WILL DIE, SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY!!"  
  
"Um...I'm sorry then."  
  
Bishop slumped to the ground unconscious and Beast patted a patch he had placed on the guy's shoulder a few seconds before. "For the patch, you really need to learn some self control my boy." He looked across the lake to see Rogue fishing Ranma out of the lake and waved to her as he picked up the unconscious Bishop. Now he had to hope Ranma would go for that deal, maybe hiding from Bishop for a couple of weeks would be a good incentive to get her to accept some experiments.   
  
"What happened Beast?" Storm asked as she floated down to land beside him.  
  
"Ranma played a little joke on Bishop and they guy went a ballistic, I'm still not sure how much was real and faked though. You recall how he got revenge on Wolverine last month?"  
  
"Indeed, do you think this might have been along similar lines?"  
  
"It's so hard to tell, the guy is like two extremes that when he pulls something like this it's impossible to understand what he's thinking."  
  
"Alright, I'll talk to Bishop about this and you can talk to Ranma. Rogue is taking her to the medical facilities right now, we can drop Bishop off in his room and wait for the sedative to wear off."  
  
"Alright, thanks for the help."  
  
"No problem, it's been pretty slow lately and this was a bit of fun."  
  
"Indeed."  
  
**********  
  
TWO WEEKS LATER  
  
The tests and experiments were done and Ranma was more than happy to get out of the lab that had been his home for the last couple of weeks. Ranma really hoped that he wouldn't have to do something like this again. He didn't think he'd ever been though anything like it in his life and Beast had performed things on him that had been really strange. In the end though it had been worth it, he had been able to learn a ton of things about this new world he was in with Jean's help. Now it was time for a little break from this chaos and swimming looked like a great idea to work off some tension that had built up lately. In her room she finished pulling on a silver and black bathing suit that Storm had loaned her, walked out to the pool, and tossing a towel beside a chair she dove in and started doing some quick laps. There were other things she needed to consider too, Bishop was at the top of that list.  
  
Over the last several days the X-men had kept Bishop from getting his revenge as well by keeping him busy with missions and lots of training sessions away from the mansion. Ranma figured that while this was going on Beast had performed close to five hundred or more tests on both of his forms to figure out how the curse and his new abilities worked, he was baffled by the mass to energy ratio that that happened every time he transformed. The big blue mutant had made her run on treadmills for hours at varying speeds, perform actions that would test her power levels to the limit, blood tests on both forms, and even the one thing he didn't even like to think about at the best of times a gynecological exam. Those things gave him the creeps, but he had learned that the things were needed no matter how much he disliked them.  
  
Shudder.  
  
He may have learned to live with the curse just a tiny bit, but some of the things he had to do at times because of it made him cringe in disgust. Now that he was out of the lab he wanted to relax a little, Beast had pushed his skills to the limits of his ability and pushed beyond that to levels he didn't know he had. His whole body hurt this morning and he wanted to swim a little before had to do anything else, so he had to do it as a girl. Beast had suggested that he might have the ability to switch the curse on and off on his own with a bit of thought. He was a bit skeptical of the idea since she had been trying to do just that for some time now with no luck. Ranma could even recall the time Nabiki suggested just that to her one night for ten thousand yen.   
  
It had been worth the money, but after several months of practice Ranma hadn't been able to find a way to control the curse, instead she had been able to find dozens of different ways to use her other Ki abilities by using different emotions for attacks and concentration. Still, Beast had come up with several suggestions that Ranma hadn't considered yet so there was a little hope that he would succeed some time in the future. There had been so much information from Beast that Ranma wondered if he would even remember everything that Beast suggested over the last couple of weeks. A lot of it had been good advice that he wanted to try out while some of it had been just plain weird.   
  
While in his room, Ranma used the bathroom sink to change into a girl and put on her new one-peice bathing suit. Grabbing a towel she heads out to the pool, tosses the towel on a deck chair, and dives into the deep end. She was surprised to find that the pool was slightly heated, almost enough to activate her curse, but it didn't happen so she just started doing some laps. Now that she had a bit more free time to think about things she wondered what the future would bring, would she be stuck in this place for the rest of her life? She trusted these X-Men more than she had a couple weeks before and with Jean's help knew quite a bit about the way things worked now, but there was still some kind of underlying feeling that kept Ranma from fully trusting them. They kept to many secrets and if some of those Danger Room battles he'd participated in were any indication they had a weird way of handling situations.   
  
He was willing to give them the benefit of doubt there was always one thing that made him refuse to take the one little step to trust them completely. Bishop was trying to kill him for pulling that practical joke, the rest of the team except for Rogue and Beast seemed to be the only one's she had any kind of contact with. The rest of them were always off doing something else, Wolverine was always leaving and returning as he did his own thing, Storm spent lots of time up in her garden on the roof while the Professor spent a great deal of his time in his office working on paperwork and down in the underground tunnels in the Cerebro room where he was always looking for emerging mutants that they could help.  
  
Ranma agreed that keeping mutants safe from a world that hated them was something that was good and right, but he still thought that they went about it in the worst way. Dropping in out of nowhere and blowing everything up to stop rampaging mutants just didn't quite fit in with what he considered the best way. The old man had taught him tactics while on the trip, tricks and cons that could be used in dozens of different situations that would have helped make the job a whole lot easier. None of them would listen though, they had their own ways of doing things and wouldn't hear of doing it any other way. She could respect that, but it still seemed a little weird that they wouldn't even consider a different way of doing things. All that damage to streets, cars, even buildings wasn't going to make them any friends in the long run. Boy did he know that, the neighbors on either side of the Tendo's place really disliked him and all those idiots that used to attack them.   
  
**********  
  
He wasn't sure what was going on, but Chad knew that things had changed in some way he didn't understand. Images of his run from that monster flashed through his mind every now and then as he walked the streets, he remembered his fear, the pain, and the shock as the creature caught and impaled his body with those claws. He knew that something else had happened, but after all this time he just couldn't remember what it was, only that it had nearly killed him. The worst part of whatever had happened to him was the hunger that seemed to gnaw at his stomach, it was impossible to ignore, but he didn't know what to do about it or how to relieve it. You see he was like a disembodied cloud and after two weeks he had learned a few things about his new state of being, the biggest one was that he didn't have a physical body anymore. He was like a ghost or wraith of some kind, he could see himself and everything around him easily, but no one else could see or touch him.   
  
Walking though solid objects had caught him by surprise and he still hadn't had a chance to test what walking through a human was like, the prospect frightened him more than a little. The hunger seemed to have a life of its own as well, it was drawing him towards something deep in the more dangerous areas of the city. There was something that had changed about his eyes too, looking at the people around him over the last few days had changed the way he perceived them. At first they'd just looked normal, but then they had all started to glow a bunch of different colors and he figured he was smart enough to know that humans didn't just start glowing on their own, so this was the way he was seeing them. They were a mix colors in dozens of different shades that were quite striking, if he hadn't been so hungry he would've liked to try and figure out what the colors meant.  
  
As a ghost he couldn't just walk into a local McDonalds and ask for a Big Mac or two to fill his nonexistent stomach anymore, so he had to find another way to do it and he didn't know what he had to do. So here he was stumbling down the street trying to think of a way to satisfy his hunger that was driving him mad and leading him who knew where, he had to find something to eat before he collapsed completely. Luckily he was being pulled towards something and some deeper part of his mind was telling him that it was food, like an instinct or a buried memory. It was there in that dark alley, in a large box that looked like it had seen some hard times as well. He kneeled down at one end of the box and looked inside to see a pair of legs bundled up in newspapers.  
  
It was some homeless guy, Chad could feel his new senses drawing him towards the guy as he stood there and wondered what this guy had to feed him. Even his eyes were telling him that this guy was different that most humans, instead of the strange glow that he'd seen on most everybody else, this guy had a kind of Rainbow like aura that shifted and waved like a surging tide. Without really realizing what he was doing Chad reached out and tried to feel the glowing colors, it was a mistake of the highest order, but only from a certain point of view. His body surged with pure ecstasy and he let off a silent scream, and writhed around as something happened to him.  
  
**********  
  
After finishing about twenty laps Ranma bobbed around for a while and put in a little practice on some of her underwater techniques to pass the time and make sure she could still do them. She'd been thinking of everything Jean had explained to her about how people perceived them and other mutants. This world was horrible, how anyone could live here and be happy seemed to be an impossibility, he understood hate, but on this level it was like and alien thing. She wanted to get home even more now that she understood what she would encounters out there beyond the fence line, her promise to her mother was one thing, but this world was...bad. There were places in this world, here in the United States no less, that if she showed any of her abilities there was a chance that the locals would hunt her down and lynch her if she's caught. Kill her for no reason other than something they thought she might do, not what she would do, but might do. Ranma had run into that kind of thing in the wilds of China where outsiders were usually killed on sight, but for it to happen in the middle of New York City here in the United States was simply incredible.  
  
Some of the information Jean had shown her touched on some of the history of the Morlocks and their massacre down in the lower tunnels, to the kinds of Sentinels the X-men had encountered, even some of their enemies like Sabertooth who was a pain in the ass to fight. Ranma had wanted to fight some of them in the Danger Room and Beast had been curious to see how that fight would go. Ranma didn't like to lose, but he hadn't expected the guy to go for a lethal shot so early in the fight and it had taken him down almost instantly. One thing Ranma did learn while with Beast and Jean was that he didn't like having a telepath in his mind and was glad when Jean was finished helping him out. Ranma had kept that improvised mental barrier up ever since, even improving upon it a bit now that he understood more about how Jean's shields worked.   
  
He'd found out something that even baffled Jean and Xavier, Ki seemed to be made to keep telepaths out of a persons mind, all she had to do was keep a tiny bit of it focused on the job and no one would ever go into her mind against her permission. That in turn would have a good side effect, making her Ki stronger than ever over time. She wasn't sure what that would mean in the future, but if she could find a way to survive out there among the insane morons that seemed to make up this world she would be fine. With that Ranma decided to get out of the pool and spent a couple of minutes drying off before heading back into the house. That reminded her of one other thing Beast had told her, her body was now using large amounts of energy and if she was just resting and not using them things were fine, but the instant she started tapping her Ki that changed and her reserves would decrease while this new power of hers would increase.  
  
Since she planned to keep that mental shield up pretty much constantly she would have to replace that energy, that meant only one thing...pizza! She made her way to the kitchen and dug some pizza out of the fridge, they ate more fast food at this place any other she had ever visited in her life. With a few deft bites and a loud burp she finished it off and tossed the box in the trash before heading up to her room to get changed back into some normal clothing, she ignored the two lechers gaping at her from the living room as she trotted up the stairs. She hadn't seen them before, but didn't think to much of it since they were just sitting in the living room like they had been there for some time now. Once in her room Ranma quickly changed and sat down on the bed to put her shoes on, instead of leaving them downstairs by the door like she should have, breaking that habit had taken most of her time over the last couple of weeks. Beast said that since she was in the United States she wouldn't have to do that kind of thing anymore if she didn't want to.  
  
This wasn't Japan so Xavier didn't seem to care and Ranma had always wondered why such a thing was needed anyway. So after thinking about it she decided to do what the others usually did and that was leave them on all day long. After that she headed for the bathroom, grabbed a cup of hot water and poured it over her arms to change back to his male form. He was about to leave the room to find Scott, the guy had promised to take him into New York today, when Ranma felt something weird in the air. He stopped and concentrated on it a bit and realized that someone with a lot of Ki had done some really powerful, but it wasn't in the mansion, but much farther away. What was even stranger was that Ranma could tell that the Ki was of a dark intent, evil in some way.  
  
"What in the world was that?"   
  
**********  
  
To Be Continued...  
  
End Notes - It's and interesting place to leave off and will drop you right into the next chapter, ever hero needs and enemy and since Ryoga isn't around and I gave Ranma a power up, he needs something to fight. This is the Marvel Universe after all, they just pop out of nowhere whenever some hero goes into action. ^_^   
  
If you have any questions just email me  
  
Ending Notes - It's and interesting place to leave off and will drop you right into the next chapter, ever hero needs and enemy and since Ryoga isn't around and I gave Ranma a power up, he needs something to fight. This is the Marvel Universe after all, they just pop out of nowhere whenever some hero goes into action. ^_^   
If you have any questions just email me 


	4. Soul Fire is Born

**********  
Prime Attitude  
Chapter 03 - Soul Fire is Born  
Cory D. Rose  
ertle2@msn.com  
(c) 2002  
**********  
  
Grabbing his things Ranma headed downstairs and into the living room, he was surprised to see Scott talking with Xavier. They turned to look at him as he entered the room and Scott waved him over. "Ranma, something has come up and our trip might have to be postponed."  
  
"What would that be?"  
  
"There seems to be something odd going on in New York and I need to go and check it out."  
  
"I was up in my room a few minutes ago and I felt something odd, I was just coming down to find one of you and tell you about it."  
  
Professor Xavier turned in his chair. "You did? What was it like?"  
  
"A flash of darkness or evil Ki, I've only felt something like it a once before in my life and that was against the guy that nearly killed my fiance."  
  
"Evil Ki?" Professor Xavier said. "I was able to pick up a burst of Psychic power somewhere in New York a few seconds ago. I'm not sure, but I think someone just died and if a mutant did it then we have to stop them."  
  
"Agreed." Scott said. "You stay here Ranma, this could get dangerous..."  
  
Ranma huffed. "Hah, who kicked your ass in the danger room a few days ago?"  
  
"This is a real fight Ranma, not a preprogrammed fight in a contained environment that limits one's abilities."  
  
"Right, I kicked your ass and you're still complaining about it. You're good at that Geom...whatits stuff..."  
  
"Geometry."   
  
"Yeah, that stuff, but you seem to depend on those fancy moves of your way to much. You need to learn how to work around your power, it makes you way to vulnerable when you lose the ability." Ranma snapped.  
  
"Now see here..." Scott growled, the kid was beginning to remind him just a little to much of Wolverine.  
  
"Calm down Scott, Ranma has made it clear that he doesn't think our methods work." Professor Xavier said.  
  
"But sir..." Scott said.  
  
"Now Scott, Ranma has proven on several occasions that he can fight better than several of us. Take him with you, he's been cooped up on the mansion for weeks now and you have been wanting to see what he can accomplish in a real battle."  
  
"But sir...he's..."   
  
"Right here!" Ranma said and thumped Scott on the arm.   
  
"Oh fine, but I still think this is a bad idea sir."   
  
"Understood." Professor Xavier said with a nod.  
  
Scott turned to Ranma and sighed. "I don't like this, this situation feels funny and know that it's going to end up turning dangerous."  
  
"Don't worry about it One Eye, I can take care of myself and have fought foes that are just as strange as some of yours."  
  
"Hey!"  
  
Ranma smirked. "Heh."  
  
"You've been hanging around with Wolverine to long." Scott muttered.  
  
"He's the only one of you guys that likes to fight as much as I do." Ranma said as they entered the garage. "So which car are we taking?"  
  
"The Jeep." Scott said and pointed to a gray Jeep.  
  
A few minutes later they pulled out of the garage, drove off the property, and headed for New York. Ranma, nervously clutching an armrest, wondering if he should mention that he could never remember riding in a car, ever. That and the openness of the Jeep made the road flying by at blur a little hard to deal with, but decided that he needed to prove himself to Scott so he ignored it as best he could. He still had his doubts about the X-men, but that didn't bother him half as much as being abandoned in another dimension with no hope of ever finding a way home.   
  
"So what are we going to do when we get there?"  
  
"I'm not sure just yet, we have to find this mutant and determine just how dangerous he is."  
  
"We already know he's dangerous, how do you plan to fight him?" Ranma asked as he tugged at the seat belt.  
  
"Whatever is needed to stop him." Scott said.  
  
Ranma nodded. "I still disagree with the way you guys handle things around here."  
  
"They work Ranma, we've been doing this for years now."  
  
"According to what I've read an seen lately your way has made things even worse for the mutants on this world."  
  
"Ranma we save lives." Scott snapped.  
  
"Oh I agree with you on that, but it's the way you go about it that bugs me. Beast had me read through several of your mission files, even video footage of everyone in action. You guys run around in brightly colored costumes, pose, give speeches in the middle of battle, and make yourselves perfect targets. That isn't a team, it's a circus act that has better abilities than normal people and all of you seem to get off on it in some way. Wolverine is extremely violent and has killed on several of occasions according to the stories I've heard, Bishop is a trained soldier, and the rest of you seem to need to fight the bad guys to get the job done."  
  
"Now listen here...I don't agree with what Wolverine does..." Scott growled.  
  
Ranma shrugged. "I call it as I see it, my old man spent a decade teaching me to be a petty thief that could handle every situation. My martial Arts skills were learned while my father tried to dislocate my arms and legs, he didn't hold back all that much and I spent more than one night covered in bruises and popped joints for just the littlest mistakes. He never broke anything because it would have wasted time that was better spent training me. Professor Xavier said you guys fight for the betterment of Mutant kind, to live in a world where humans and mutants can live together in piece. Right?"  
  
"Right."  
  
"Then why do you guys hide?" Ranma asked.  
  
"We are targets Ranma, people are out there that want to kill us and we have to keep to ourselves to have the freedom to fight those mutants that are to dangerous to the normal humans. A lot of them seem to take pride in the fact that they can kill a certain number of humans without even trying. They are dangerous and if we weren't here to stop them then no one would be."  
  
"No, if you were really fostering some kind of peace between humans and mutants then you wouldn't go about it the way you do. You save lives, but at the same time you guys don't seem to go out of your way to help normal humans, instead you ride in, blow everything up, and leave the mess for others to clean up."  
  
"You just don't understand, that isn't how things work on this world. It's to simple, we have enemies that would take advantage of us if we stuck around, we would be blamed for all the destruction, for everything."  
  
Ranma didn't think that would happen, but the few times he had talked to Beast about this problem he had tried to explain just why humans seemed to turn on mutants. It didn't matter if you were a good guy or not, they just seemed to turn on them for absolutely no reason. Blaming them for everything without thought or reason. Ranma kind of understood that, he had been through old villages in China where everybody that lived there seemed to worship fire and think the world was flat. It wasn't that they were stupid, it was that they were afraid of change and since the elders of the village made the rules, their old way of thinking, the fear of anything new always seemed to cloud their thinking and passed this on to the next generation.   
  
He blinked. Where the hell was all this crap coming from? Ranma tried to remember one village that he had visited like that and couldn't think of even one. Yet the information was there in his head, like the tactics of fighting went hand in hand with information on several other things as well. His father had never taught him this stuff, so where did it come from? Shaking his head, Ranma watched out the Jeep's windows as they passed over a large bridge. He looked out over the bay as boats moved back and forth across the water. Concentrating, he seemed to have information trickling into his head from somewhere. Little facts on things, like math equations and other little odds and ends that just confused him. Even as his conversation with Scott was going through his head he was thinking of all the damage a mutant could do to a single building given the right kind of power.   
  
Scott's optic beams were like a beam of pure force energy that could rip a building apart with ease and all he had to do was take his glasses off and open his eyes to fire him. The Ki inside Scott's body was another mystery, Ranma knew it was there, but what he was feeling was kind of disconnected from Scott in some way, as if he was pulling from an outside source like the Old Ghoul did with her Ki filled staff. He shook his head again, where the hell was all this coming from? Was this energy he was linked to starting to alter him in other ways that he didn't understand? If it was there was no way he could really fight it or prevent it from happening and he didn't like it. He growled deep in his throat  
  
"Are you alright Ranma?" Scott asked, still a little peeved with Ranma's accusations earlier.  
  
"Yeah, I just have a headache." He didn't want to think about it right now, so he needed to distract Scott. "The air here is horrible."  
  
"Oh it's not that bad."  
  
"I grew up outside cities, out on the open road moving from one place to another. I got used to fresh air, this isn't fresh air. I can actually taste it, that isn't fresh air."  
  
"Well it's not as bad as it used to be." Scott conceded, glad for a change of subject to keep them from fighting.  
  
"You're kidding?"  
  
"Nope, we've been slowly fixing the air here in New York for some time now."  
  
Ranma just shrugged and looked out the window again.  
  
**********  
  
They pulled up to a stop light and Scott tapped a button on the dash, a section flipped around to reveal a screen with a grid pattern on it. "This Ranma is a kind of tracker, it's connected, via a satellite, to the mansion's computer system. According to the it the thing were looking for is within a few blocks of here."  
  
"Does it know exactly where?"  
  
"No, we didn't get that much of a signal from the mutant, just that it was in this area. I will have to find it on my own."  
  
"Right, just drop me somewhere along here..."  
  
"Look in the glove compartment there." Scott said as they turned the corner.  
  
Opening the box, Ranma found a small medallion of some kind with a black X over a red background. "What the heck is this thing?"  
  
"Ever see Star Trek where they use those communication badges? Just like those."  
  
"Never heard of it."   
  
"What?"  
  
"Star Truck. I've never heard of it before."  
  
"Um...yeah. Okay, well set the blank side against a spot on your shirt and hold it there for a few seconds. When it flashes a couple of times it will be stuck to your shirt."  
  
Following instructions, Ranma placed it on his shirt and wondered how the blasted thing worked. "Okay?"  
  
"That's a temporary communicator we use when needed, just tap it and say Cyclops and I'll hear you. I have a smaller version hard wired into my visor right here and we can talk to each other even when we are several miles away from each other."  
  
"Cool." Ranma said. At least he wouldn't have to go into this alone. When they came to a stop at the next corner, he started to hop out of the Jeep.  
  
"I'm going to find a place to park and I'll start searching as well, call me the instant you see anything odd." Scott said. "Meet me by that ice cream store across the street in two hours if you don't find anything."  
  
"Alright." Ranma said as he dashed to the sidewalk and ignored the glares that were directed at him from the people walking around. As he looked down the street Ranma recalled some of the Danger Room battles he'd been in lately and wondered if any of them would apply to this situation. Beast and Wolverine had run him through dozens of scenarios to test his skills, from regular fighters to Sentinels to computer generated virtual reality programs that could make up situations that even the regular equipment of the room couldn't create realistically. Those fights had been the best he'd ever fought because the computer generated people had reacted more life like than the one's the Danger Room provided and he'd even had a chance to provide Beast with an over view of his fight with Saffron, even built a program on it to practice with later on. Ranma was looking forward to fighting the winged jerk again and testing his improved skills against him.   
  
He knew some of the most used programs in the Danger Room were based on how to fight in an area like this since most heroes and teams operated out of a city, this was their main territory and they had to be able to protect it. This situation felt different to him though and he wasn't sure why, more serious or dangerous in some way. The X-men tended to protect humanity by fighting rampaging mutants, stopping them at any cost and the Danger Room had shown him how they went about it. He wasn't sure why, but the X-men and other mutants that he had seen in action in the room tended to fight in funny ways. They didn't use proper tactics, instead they would directly confront the threat, try to talk to it, piss it off with threats, and battle it from all sides with the rest of the team. This seemed counter productive to him, how could battling every mutant you met bring about a long lasting peace?  
  
This situation was different in some way, it had the potential to blow up into a major threat if handled in the X-men's normal way. He felt that if he could get to the thing first he might be able to stop it or get it to an unpopulated area before the real fight began, but first he had to find the thing and he wasn't having luck. It wasn't giving out that dark feeling anymore, it was muted in some way and didn't leave enough for him to follow. Ranma knew he was close though, within a block or so, but pinpointing the thing was going to be incredibly hard. This was something Ranma had never done before, he wasn't used to looking for a fight, it usually found him when he wasn't ready.   
  
Since it was still pretty early in the day the sun was still climbing into the sky, for some reason Ranma thought hunting for a monster should be done at night. Still, doing something like this during the day would make it a little easier, or so he though as he looked down on the street again. There were people everywhere, walking around, running, playing in front of apartment buildings, in cars as they drove back and forth, even a whole plethora of taxis for as far as the eye could see. 'Yep', Ranma decided, 'doing this at night would be a lot easier than during the day. Sheesh'. Moving over to the side of the building Ranma looked over the edge to spot an old rust covered fire escape, he needed to be on the ground to find this thing so he hopped down the escape and let go of the Umisen-ken invisibility as he landed, making sure no one saw him.  
  
"Hey look, it's our next victim."  
  
Ranma turns around to see several kids about his own age, they were all dressed alike with similar colored clothing, jeans, t-shirts, and bandanas. Gangs, he'd dealt with his fair share of these kinds of idiots over the years, they were always good for a quick workout and to test new moves. Though he was cursing himself silently for missing them in first place, he would have to work on that, his old man would have belted him for making that kind of mistake. "Huh?"   
  
The leader pulls this tiny switch blade out of his pocket and flicks it around a couple of times to release the blade. "Give me all your money or I'll cut those fancy clothes off your body freak boy."  
  
Resisting the urge to laugh, Ranma turns to look at the gang and smirks. "I think it's only fair to warn you I'm a fully trained Martial Artist."  
  
The punk snorts. "Like that will save you from all of us, now we're going to cut you up as well, and leave you for dead."  
  
Ranma crouches down. "Bring it on, Baka."  
  
Gangs the world over are basically the same, they don't have much skill or brains and wander around in packs of five or more. Most normal people can't fight back against them because they always attack in a group to commit one kind of crime or another, one on one they are truly pathetic. Ranma was in a hurry, but he wanted to have some fun and what better way to do that than by fighting these idiots. If he was in Japan he might have given them a bit more respect, but these guys didn't even move like fighters, they just depended on fear and their little knives to hurt others. As they closed in Ranma waited for the last possible second, when he could see the leaders eyes glinting evilly from an expected kill.   
  
Eight blows, that was all it took to take out all seven of them. He used two blows on the leader because of the insults, as they had jumped forward he'd exploded into motion, striking with just enough power to hurt them and take them down without killing them. Two of them flew back into the wall and slid unconscious to the ground and flopped over. Three of them found out what having their faces slammed into the cement of the alley tasted like and didn't get back up. Ranma elbow smashed the sixth one an sent him flying out of the alley to land on the hood of a car parked by the curb. The leader, at almost the same time had his wrist snapped and received a head butt, Ranma tossed him after the other guy so that they both ended up on the hood of the car.   
  
More out of habit than anything else, his father had kind of instilled it in him, Ranma stripped them of all their valuable and earned himself about four hundred dollars. He even found several packages of drugs, though he had no idea what kind they were. The old man had always told him to destroy the stuff whenever he came across it, being caught with the stuff in some parts of China was and instant death sentence, so he used his Ki to flash fry it and tossed the dust on the ground. He kept the money though, in his opinion he'd earned that and getting it back to the people they'd taken it from was impossible, considering the drugs they probably wouldn't care anyways. At least this way he wouldn't lose it all to his father's wallet and the local bars in some strange quest for the food. His father had developed some weird habits over the years and actually managed to keep the Tendo girls from finding out about half of them. Ranma was a bit surprised when the locals parted before him and gave him some congratulations about defending them from hooligans like that. He just nodded and stuffed the money in his pocket as he walked off with a wave, maybe this place wasn't as bad as he'd been led to believe.  
  
He sent his senses out again, but it was just as hard to detect this thing as it was before, it was close, but just out of reach. He was about to give up and just look around randomly when he spotted something out of place, there were some nearly pitch black shadows buried in the back of an alley just up ahead and off to the side. Then he turned away and almost forgot about them an instant later, shaking his head at making that kind of mistake, he turned back and concentrated a little. The shadows, once he got close enough to them, opened up as if they had never existed in the first place. At the back of the alley was an old guy dressed like a homeless bum, but his eyes were glowing as he looked back out at him, Ranma felt himself shudder a bit. He'd found the guy alright and he looked pissed, now what was he supposed to do? He reached for the pin on his chest to call Scott when the guy moved.  
  
He stood up and started walking out of the alley, he never stopped looking at Ranma even as he moved. With the shadows gone the normal citizens could now see the guy as he stepped out of the alley and into the path of the regular people walking along the sidewalk. Ranma wasn't someone that would just hurt someone on a whim, but when this bum reached out, almost casually, and grabbed a woman by the neck Ranma knew he had made a mistake. The bum's eyes lit up with evil delight as a dark aura appeared around the girl, she was a young blonde that had been on her way to work, she screamed as her life was sucked out of her and her body turned into a withered husk in a matter of seconds. Once she was drained the bum tossed it away without any remorse, it hit a wall and shattered into dust as if had been buried under the desert for several hundred years.  
  
Ranma reacted without thought as he leapt forward and smashed his elbow into the bum's head to send him flying back into the alley where he landed hard. The bum had killed that girl like it was the easiest thing in the world and seemed to enjoy it, even the Phoenix people hadn't been that cold blooded to people. This thing was a killer, that was another area about the X-men that he didn't like, they were obsessed with taking the bad guy alive. A killer like this had to be stopped and playing with him just wasn't going to do. It had to be stopped, permanently, and he had ever intention of doing just that. Contacting Scott was the furthest thing from his mind, he would only have tried to stop him and if this thing lived more people were going to be killed. Turning back to the monster Ranma ignored the crowed he was drawing and flared up his Ki and growled in hatred, he would make sure this thing never got a chance to do that kind of thing again. He would destroy it just like he had Saffron, something this evil didn't deserve a chance to live. A martial artist had to protect the weak and he doubted there were very many people in this city that could take things down.   
  
"You won't get a chance to do that again monster."  
  
"I'm not a monster, just a mutant that likes to eat the living energy put off by the people of this city. That in turn fuels my powers, it's a good trade off don't you think, little hero." The bum said from where he was laying, his voice was several octaves to low to be a real human's voice though.  
  
"I'll stop you from killing anyone else." Ranma growled.  
  
The bum pulled himself to his feet and grinned at Ranma. "They are cattle, the only thing they are good for is feeding me, other than they serve no purpose and you will soon join the cow, mutants taste the best of all. HEHAHAHAHAHA!!"  
  
"Come on jerk face, is that the best evil laugh you can do? I've heard better on a cartoon show." Ranma said as he tried to move forward, he didn't like this situation, there were to many people around for him to fight this thing effectively. They were at the edges of the alley, just standing there looking like they were watching a show, and that meant he couldn't use his large scale abilities like the Hiruu Shouten Ha.   
  
Pointing his hand forward, the bum seemed to burst into black fire and filled the alley way around them with dark shadows. Ranma was shocked as he watched the bum's skin slowly eaten away by the black flames, so shocked that the didn't get a chance to dodge as the thing fired a three foot wide beam of black energy right into him. Ranma found himself flying across the street, over the heads of the people watching the fight, and slamming into a wall with enough force to crack the brick work. He hadn't been hit with a shot like that since the last time him and Taro had a little get together, only Ryoga had ever hit him harder.   
  
"Well hero, what are you going to do now?!" The bum yelled.  
  
Crawling to his feet, Ranma shook himself and rubbed his chest to see what kind of damage he might have acquired. As far as he could tell it was just a large bruise, he hadn't been expecting that and he cursed at himself for not seeing the obvious. He walked across the now empty road and talked to the crowd. "All you get out of here, that thing is way dangerous and can't stop him and protect all of you at the same time."  
  
"Listen hero, we'll do what we want. You got that?" One of the meaner looking guys said.  
  
"That's your choice then, watch if you want but don't blame me if you get hurt by something, this thing wants to kill all of you and I don't know why."  
  
The guy smirked and pulled a small hand gun. "I can protect myself."  
  
Dismissing the guy from his thoughts Ranma turned back to the bum to see that he was nothing but a large pillar of human shaped black fire now. Reaching out with his senses Ranma was amazed at the amount of Ki the guy was putting out, it was several levels above what he was currently using. The only way he saw to stop this thing was to overpower it, but if he used anymore Ki he would flare up and that wouldn't be a very good idea according to what he remembered being told about earlier. Humans and Mutants don't mix that well and can lead to lots of hate and anger from normal humans.   
  
"Don't say I didn't warn you." Ranma said as he flared his aura up and burst into bright blue energy. "This fight could get pretty dangerous."  
  
"Are you going to attack that thing or what?" Asked some kid from the side lines.  
  
"Yeah sure kid, just powering up." Ranma said with a smirk as he turned to charred bum. "Hey, you got a name or do you want me to call you strange names all afternoon?"  
  
"Call me Soul Fire."  
  
"Alright burning shoe lace, bring it on." Ranma yelled and fired out a powerful blast of Ki even as he remembered that the power of his Ki had been increased by that strange link. He'd been so intent on the fight that he forgot that a simple blast would cause some major damage if he wasn't careful. The bright white beam of energy that fired out of his outstretched hands and slammed into Soul Fire with an explosion that shattered the ground and walls around the alley and sent Soul Fire flying back down the alley, across the street and into another alley about three blocks away. Ranma channeled a bit of Ki to his legs and flashed forward faster than he'd ever moved before, launched into a really high jump that toped out at about six stories, and seconds later landed and hit Soul Fire with a haymaker that Akane had taught him. Soul Fire screamed out a curse as his head was nearly taken off his shoulders and he was slammed into a wall with enough force to shatter it around his body.  
  
One thing Ranma didn't realize for several seconds was that he was moving at Amaguri-ken speeds as he began to punch the thing as hard as he could. Some of the crowd had followed them to see what else was going to happen and they were there to witness it, as several hundred blows later, Soul Fire finally managed to get in a blow. It may have been a single blast of compressed energy, but it was enough to send lift Ranma off his feet and send him flying through a nearby wall and stun him for a second. Soul Fire, beaten, broken, and bleeding stood up and cracked his neck before walking over to Ranma and grabbing him by the throat without showing any pain whatsoever and lifting him off the ground. Ranma had to scream as he felt his own soul burst into fire as the monstrous thing tried to drain his own life the instant it touched him. One thing Ranma has always had in abundance is a lot of life force and with his Ki, somewhat super charged as it was, there was no way that this thing could drain him as quickly as it had that girl just a few minutes before. That was about the only thing that saved his life, because at that moment Soul Fire was blasted by several carefully placed visor blasts from Cyclops.  
  
The bum dropped Ranma and he collapsed to the ground and groaned in pain, beams of solid red plasma firing through the air above him as Cyclops continued to push Soul fire back into a wall. Through half open eyes Ranma could tell the bum wasn't really feeling Cyclops's blasts, instead they were just forcing him back a few inches at a time. Ranma forced himself to his feet and glared at the thing for a second and let a bit more of his Ki flow through his body and flared up a little more as it soothed his damaged body and tightened his muscles. He maneuvered around behind Cyclops as he continued to pound on the guy and got into position with the bum standing beside a couple of dumpsters. Ranma was a bit surprised to see that Cyclops's eye blasts were cutting neat little holes through the solid metal of the things to strike the bum about his body and keep him off balance.   
  
Taking a deep breath, Ranma formed a soft ball sized sphere of bright blue Ki in his hands and focused his senses on the bum. Ranma's eyes started to glow the tiniest bit blue as well as the power flowed through him and timed his attack so that it would hit just a second after one of Cyclops's optic blasts. The sphere flared and fired out of his hand, not as a ball of Ki, but as a solid beam of power that lit up the alley and kicked up the dust around him. Even being constantly hit by Cyclops's blasts, the bum saw it coming and tried to dodge it, but the beam was moving to fast and hit him right in the shoulder. The instant it hit Ranma let the beam go and watched emotionlessly as it rushed toward the bum, for a second nothing happened, but Ranma could see the energy flowing around the guys body. He waved for Cyclops to stop firing and received a glare from the guy, but he stopped and at that instant Soul Fire screamed as his body exploded with a bright blue flash.  
  
Cyclops gaped at the sight and glanced back at Ranma in shock, in all his time on the X-men, he had rarely seen someone taken out like that. He had seen bodies, but he the good guys were supposed to take the bad guy down, not kill them like that. "What the hell did you just do?!" He yelled.  
  
"I watched this guy kill a girl right before my eyes just before you showed up, sucked all the energy out of her body and tossed the corpse away like a piece of trash that had no further use. The body turned to dust and ashes when it hit a wall, this guy was to dangerous to let live. It was worse than Saffron and that guy at least had his honor to keep him from causing to much damage."  
  
"You killed him!" Scott yelled.  
  
Ranma sighed and shrugged. "Yes, I did."  
  
"You don't kill! You never kill unless it's just you or him, there were still option we could have taken!" Scott yelled in Ranma's face.  
  
Scowling, Ranma turned his still glowing eyes on Scott. "A monster like that had his chance to live the first time we looked at each other and he made his choice."  
  
Scott glanced back at the charred stain where the bum had been before making up his mind about something. When he turned back to Ranma, he wasn't there any more, but walking back down the alley where about a hundred gawkers had been watching the scene. They looked a little shocked too, but most of them were giving Ranma a look of respect, a little fear, and in some instances they seemed to agree with Ranma. Cyclops also noticed that none of them seemed to even see him, it was like they didn't care that he was there at all. There was no screams about mutants, no death threats, nothing. Ranma seemed to have them held in some kind of aura as he moved among them checking to see if anyone had been hurt by the fight in any way. When they got back to the mansion he would have to have a talk with the professor about this. Then he noticed some police officers at the other end of the alley sitting on the hoods of their cars waiting for something.  
  
"Come on Ranma, it's time to leave." Scott yelled.  
  
Patting a little girl on the head he turned and waved to the crowd as Scott started off down the street. Ranma wasn't about to admit that he was a bit sad that he had killed the bum, that blast should have been enough to seriously injure him, but the instant he had fired the thing had increased in strength by quite a bit and ended up killing the guy. He wasn't about to admit that it had been an accident though, better to let Scott think what he wanted than to admit to anything like that. A few minutes later they reached his jeep, hopped in, and drove out of the city. They didn't talk during the trip, Ranma didn't want to and it was obvious that Scott was still pissed off at him over what he had done.   
  
**********  
  
The garage door opened as they pulled into the garage and after coming to a stop and putting the jeep in park Scott jumped out and slammed the door as he stalked into the mansion. With a snort at the way the guy was acting Ranma got out and followed him a few seconds later, but decided to head to the kitchen and get something to drink before heading up to his room. He saw Scott heading down into the lower levels of the mansion and Ranma knew that he was looking for Xavier to tell him what had happened. After getting some water to drink he headed out into the front room and saw that Logan and Rogue were waiting for him. He walked on over and finished off the last bit of his water. "Hey guys, what's up?  
  
"What happened over there, kid?" Logan asked, though Rogue was giving him a hard glare. So Ranma figured they already knew what had happened.  
  
"I took the guy down." He said with a shrug, killing a murder didn't exactly fill   
him with to much guilt over his death.  
"You killed him? We DON'T DO THAT!" Rogue yelled.  
  
Ranma glared at them for a second and shrugged. "I don't understand why not, it was an accident, I'll admit that, but I'm not going to feel guilty about it. The guy killed a woman right in front of me, sucked the life right out of her and tossed the body to the side like an old shoe. It disintegrated into ashes. I had to stop the guy."  
  
"He killed someone?" Logan asked with a glare.  
  
Ranma nodded.  
  
"Then you did the right thing." Logan said with a shrug. "I'm going to go and finish watching my show and drink some beer."   
  
"We don't' kill Ranma." Rogue said.   
  
To Ranma it sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than him. "Rogue, I will never understand this whole aspect of your team. You take on horrors and monsters right of the movies and you are telling me that you think leaving something that has killed entire cities is a good thing?"  
  
"We have to set an example." Rogue snapped. This was a question she could handle.  
  
Ranma snorted. "Yeah right, maybe if you could have taken one of these guys down a little quicker instead of playing with them for who knows how long, you would have saved even more lives. Normal humans are not stupid and they understand the kill or be killed argument. I won't kill unless I absolutely have to, but I won't let anything hold me back once I've made the decision to do it. In this case it was an accident because I had some kind of increase in the flow of my own powers right when I fired, but this thing had already killed and proven that he was more than willing to do so again. So I stopped him while Scott fired at him with non-lethal force and played a game of push and shove with him."   
  
"You can't believe that?" Rogue asked quietly.  
  
"Up until I had to kill Saffron a few a while back I was a Martial Artist, it was my duty to use my abilities to protect the innocent. I followed that way of thinking religiously and nearly had one of my friends killed because of it and had to kill the guy to save her as well. When we got home I had a little talk with my dad, he is an idiot when it comes to anything outside of martial arts, but in that area he is a genius. He told me that by killing Saffron that I had taken a step onto a path that even he hadn't had to go down. I was a killer, as such I could not be a martial artist any more. My new path made me a Warrior, a killer that will do anything to protect the weak, family, anyone that deserves it. It is a path I must walk alone." Ranma snapped. He had forgotten about that conversation with his father until this very instant and it helped him make the decision he had been hesitating to make for some time. As he left the room he was that Logan was watching him out of the corner of his eye and Ranma could tell that of all the people here that he understood the most.  
  
**********  
  
A couple of days later Ranma was standing out by the lake and actually thinking for a change, even he had to admit it was pretty rare for him to think about things, but that guys death had shook him a little, it wasn't guilt, but regret. Ever since coming to this strange place he'd been doing a lot more thinking and figured it was because he didn't understand what was going on around him. Now he didn't know anymore, his head was clearer than it ever had been and he couldn't really think of a reason for it except for regret. He didn't want to end up hurting someone because his new abilities were so hard to control, the last couple of days had been spent going over the fight and he had found dozens of mistakes that he could have avoided if he had remembered that he was a warrior and some super powered moron, he had to learn from his mistakes and move on. Surprisingly most of the X-men had stayed friendly with him after what he had done and gotten a lot of grudging respect from Wolverine and Bishop for it. Though Scott treated him like criminal that needed to be thrown in jail, but Xavier had toned that down a little and got the guy to back off.  
  
He picked up a hand full of rocks and started skipping them out over the water, lightly charging them with Ki to turn this into a bit of practice and fun at the same time. By the third throw he was skipping them a couple dozen times before they sank in the middle of the lake. There was one the other thing that was getting to him, his Ki had never been this responsive before. Now it came to him with incredible ease, if he wanted to he could charge one of these rocks up, toss it out, and make it explode with enough force to make the lake churn with waves. It was kind of like a delayed blast Breaking Point, Ryoga had no idea just how easy that trick was to copy if a person saw it enough times and if he stayed in this world for as long as he thought he might, every skill and move he had ever seen was starting to have it's uses. Ranma figured he would have taught himself the technique by now anyway if he hadn't given his promise to the old ghoul about those Amazon Techniques, he figured in this world it didn't matter so long as he kept them to himself. If he needed it he would be able to pull it off with ease, but until then he couldn't even practice it, his body wasn't blast resistant yet, he would have to work on that first. There were others though that didn't bind him as effectively as the Amazon's techniques and in six months or so he would have them all down.  
  
All of his techniques were easier to do now, his fight with Soul Fire had proven that in ways he hadn't understood before. Physically he was about twenty times stronger than he was before coming here, could reach speeds that even amazed him, and fire off a blast of energy strong enough to cut a hole in the moon if used at full power and exhausted his energy. He was a power house of energy and destruction, Ranma didn't like it in the least. He hadn't earned his new power and yet he had to learn to live with it. According to Beast he was going to get even stronger as well, these were just the first changes, next he had to deal with his bones and muscle getting much stronger than a normal human could achieve and instead of slowing him down it would actually make his reflexes even faster. Even his quick healing, something he'd always been proud of, was working at increased levels. Though he didn't think there was anyone that could match Wolverine for the speed of his healing factor, that was just something that he didn't fully understand yet.  
  
What in the world was he going to do with all that power? Was there even anyone around that could give him a challenge in a fight anymore? At his full strength Ranma knew he could wipe the floor with these X-men, but they would take him down if they worked as a team and they were very good at doing just that, one on one he had advantages over them in several areas. He'd always wanted to be the best fighter of his generation, perhaps even the best ever, but this was taking that title away from him. Gaining it because he had somehow obtained a link to a powerful form of energy meant he hadn't earned his power and it ticked him off. It ruined his dream, the one thing that had allowed him to survive ten years on the road with his old man. He was a super powerful fighter now and he hadn't earned it, but he would have to learn to live with it and control it.   
  
Coming to grips with this was going to be very hard, people with powers like his were either criminals or heroes on this planet and used them for that profession. Ranma wasn't a criminal or super villain, he couldn't go out and start committing crimes and hurting people on a whim. Ranma knew he would never go that rout, but he also knew something else, he wasn't a hero either. He would protect people when he could and take up the challenge, but to run around day and night fighting crime and taking on super villains just wasn't his way either. He didn't want to settle down into a cozy life as a hero fighting crime, he wanted to get home to the world he had grown up, to his mother, to his few friends and things he understood. To what he considered normal, this place, though nice was just to different from what he was used to.  
  
This world was just so dark and violent, everything seemed to turn into a fight over the littlest things. A good number of these mutants had gained their power and let it corrupt them completely and now they went out of their way to kill people, actually kill them in any number of gross and depraved ways. He recalled that pretty blonde that had been killed and wondered what her life had been like, had she been happy, sad, out for little walk, or on her way to work? Soul Fire had killed her in an instant, draining away her life as if it was meaningless to him what kind of person she had been. He could still hear her as she screamed and died, see the look of shock on her face and the light as it faded from her eyes and died out. That alone made the regret that he was feeling lighten up a little and leaving him just enough to feel guilty over the decision he had made this morning.  
  
This was the kind of evil this team was formed to combat and Ranma was all for it, but a part of him still thought they were going about it in the wrong way. His increased ability to think seemed to point out all the holes in the X-men's thinking, things they themselves didn't seem to see in the right light. Flaws that his father had taught him to look for when fighting any enemy in a life and death struggle, that was one area that his old man excelled at, tactics and even out thinking the enemy, well sometimes. It depended on how serious the situation really was and if Genma actually had to fight the person attacking. Ranma recalled that it had usually been left up to him to do the dirty work while the old man shouted insults at him to make him fight better and pass on a bit of warped wisdom at the same time.  
  
That brought up the next thing, how was he to use this new found power of his? It wasn't like he could go to the mountains and train for several months to get a feel for his limits since they were slowly increasing with each passing day by just the littlest amount, he wouldn't even have to train to make them do that. So where did that leave him? The X-Men had offered him a place on the team, but he was still getting the feeling that he didn't belong here, he needed to do something else to find his way home to his mother. He couldn't care less if he never saw Akane again, her hate was pretty obvious for all to see, well except for the old man and Tendo. They were oblivious to everything around them when it came to the non-existent relationship him and Akane pretended to have.  
  
"Ranma?"  
  
"Professor, what can I do for you?" Ranma said without looking around.  
  
"How are you feeling, are your wounds healed enough to be out here?"  
  
"Yeah, I've always been a fast healer."  
  
"What are you thinking about?"  
  
"Home mostly, I want to go back."  
  
"We might eventually be able to help out with that, or if not us there are others out there that might be able to get you home."  
  
"Oh? Like who?"  
  
"Reed Richards comes to mind first, he's one of the worlds leading brains on technology and aliens. Then there is Tony Stark, his company is one of the top five in the world for producing strange and hard to find gadgets, they might be able to help you. Perhaps the Avengers as well, though I don't know if their current team has anybody that might be of help."  
  
"It's a place to start I guess."  
  
"You're not staying here are you?"  
  
"I can't, I have to find my way home and if it means walking every inch of this world to get back, I have to do it."  
  
"I do understand, when will you be leaving?"  
  
Ranma turned around to look at the Xavier. "In a few days or so, I still need to make some arrangements and finish some things with Beast. I also need the use of your Danger Room to put in some harsh practice time, my Ki is still too fluid and needs to be harnessed and under my full control before I wander out into the world to find a way home."  
  
"I'll help out in anyway I can, most of the team will be leaving in the morning to go on a mission. Perhaps we could set the Danger Room up for you and let you go from there, are there any areas you would like to concentrate on?"  
  
"Yeah, I have a few ideas. I also need to find out something and I guess you would be the guy to talk to."  
  
"What would that be?"  
  
"Back home I tended to react without thought when I was doing certain things and wasn't really known to think about things much. Now suddenly I'm thinking about everything, my every action, reaction, my situation, home, the X-Men, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Why would things change so drastically almost over night?"  
  
Xavier chuckled a little. "Ranma, you're growing up into the man you have been struggling to become for a long time now. As you get older your mind changes and starts to work in a more efficient way than it does as a teenager, I think you've had this change because of all the stress you've had to endure both here with us and the team and back in your own dimension. You are seeing things in a new light, finally able to think for yourself and wondering what the hell you were thinking of in the first place. It's a natural progression from youth to adulthood."  
  
"But this seems to have happened over night..." Ranma protested.  
  
"I've noticed the signs since that first day we met Ranma, in the last two and half weeks you've changed and matured quite a bit. That fight you had with Soul Fire was a tragedy, but it helped out put certain things in perspective in your subconscious. No matter what Scott thinks, I believe you did the right thing as well. It's just that here in this time and place the whole country looks down on killing the bad guy, no matter how evil or depraved and very rarely accepts when one is killed."  
  
"I think I understand, but I need to work them out in my head if that's true. I think best while I'm fighting professor, is there anyway I can use the Danger Room right now to start my new training?"  
  
"Sure, I've got several programs I can send you through that just might challenge you both physically and mentally."  
  
"Sounds cool, let's have some fun." Ranma said with a smirk.  
  
**********  
  
The End  
  
Ending Notes - Ah, I finally got off my lazy ass and finished this short chapter. It only took way longer than I expected, but that's alright, I got it done and I don't have to think about it anymore. This will be the end of this particular story for a while, it will take some time to construct a decent sequel of some kind so I will do what I promised so long ago. I'm opening this universe up to anyone that wants to continue this idea. They can be short stories, epics, anything you want. All that I ask is that I see it first and that a few simple rules are followed for each story.  
  
Ranma has a long road ahead of him at the moment and in the marvel universe nothing is ever simple. He may run into old retired heroes, he may make the Avengers look like rank armatures and swat The Torch down like a fly with a HSH in the middle of Times Square, the possibilities are endless. I picture Ranma walking around the world, sometimes traveling with Wolverine, Rogue, even Jubilee at times in search of a way home. How many times will he come close to achieving this and how many times will he have it taken from in the old Marvel style of give and take?  
  
^_^  
  
No one knows, but I would like to see people try.  
  
Let me know if you are interested  
  
C. Rose  
ertle2@msn.com 


	5. Prime Attitude II Snark Attack!

Notes - Due to a complete lack of writing inititive lately I'm cleaning up some smaller chapters and posting them in place of the larger ones. I will be doing this for several fics over the next couple of weeks.  
  
This is the second part to the Prime Attituded series. I figured since no one seemed to be interested in taking up the story where I left off that I would come up witth a new story line. Let me know what you think. I'm going to try and show off a someone from the Marvel Universe with each chapter of this second part. First up is are a pair of kids named Katie Power and Franklin 'Tattle Tale' Richards with a brief mention of Spiderman.   
  
^_^  
  
Send Reviews, I need the motivation and I'm also quite interested in what people have to say. Think of each chapter of this as a stand alone comic as well as part of the whole, just like a comic series.   
  
**********  
  
Prime Attitude II  
  
Chapter 00 - The Blue Fire Man  
  
Cory D. Rose  
  
ertle2@msn.com  
  
(c) 2003  
  
**********  
  
Life can be weird sometimes, take a dimensionally displaced boy by the name of Ranma Saotome for instance. From the time he was born he seems to have been singled out for one of the worst lives a person can ever have. He stayed blissfully ignorant until he was five or so, playing around the house and generally having the normal life of a little kid. Then during the course of one night he was tricked into signing, with a bit of finger paint, a contract that would ruin his life for the next decade or so. A promise, to become a man among men, or willingly commit suicide if his mother didn't think he was manly enough. Such a thing can, if left unchecked mess up a person's mind quite easily. After all what kind of mother would ask for such at thing of a child they loved?  
  
The next day he had been taken on the road to begin his training in the family Martial Arts with his father. Genma Saotome had proven time and again that he was a horrible father and role model, with almost every action he had ever committed or forced upon his son. Forcing a five year old to walk twelve to fifteen hours a day without complaint, to survive beatings in the name of training that would have crippled anyone else. Ranma endured this and much more over the years and he came out of it one of the world's best martial artists, it was one of the few things he was proud of. Physically he was a prime example of a man, everything that a man among men had to look like and he had no end of females interested in him.   
  
On the down side, because of his father, Ranma was deficient mentally and had problems understanding the simplest things. He spent all his time with his father and not around other kids his own age and this had made him one of those people that didn't know how to react correctly in certain situations. When confronted with something he didn't understand he would grow defensive and try to pick a fight to prove himself. This was a trait that his father had forced upon him so that he could be easier to control and keep him from rebelling against him. After enduring the hell that his father had heaped upon him for over a decade they had returned to Japan where more plans were being set in motion. Genma Saotome had planned his son's entire life for him, first by taking his childhood and ruining that with nothing but martial arts and stunting him mentally. Then by taking him to Jusenkyo and giving him a curse that transformed him into a girl and took away the one thing he took pride in, being a man.   
  
This had made him even worse than ever, instead of thinking about the best way to deal with the curse he had been forced to act even more like a man than ever before with unreasonable pride and willing to get into a fight with anyone to make himself feel better. Then the Amazons had come and his fight with Shampoo. Normally he would have just sat there and let her beat him up over the food that him and his old man had stolen, but this time he needed to prove himself, even as a girl, that he was indeed a man. One victory later he was being chased across China by a psychopath trying to kill him because she couldn't accept losing to him. From there things had just gotten worse.  
  
They arrived in Japan and for the next two years it was a war zone pushing him to higher and higher levels of training to survive and protect, not one but three, fiancée's from causing problems. He learned how to tap into his Ch'i and eventually fire off balls of destructive energy that could blow up walls and create craters in the ground. Then the ultimate test of his skills had come as super powerful fighters from around the world converged on him to prove themselves, Pantyhose Taro, Herb of the Musk, and finally Saffron the Phoenix King. Their reasons for picking the fights were all different and filled with pride and arrogance, believing that they were better than everyone else and would go to any lengths to prove it. Ranma had defeated them all and proven himself to be the better person, physically.  
  
Still he hadn't really come to terms with the way his life had turned out, even after two years of war over things he didn't care about. Then after being forced to actually kill Saffron, things had changed, for the worse in some ways. He had gotten fed up and was finally able to move beyond his unwavering arrogance and started to use his head for something other than someone's convenient punching bag. He was improving himself finally, mentally, and growing more and more every day. At the same time he had been forced to pretend to be what he had been and it had gotten harder and harder to keep from hurting his enemies. By the time his time to leave his world came he had placed himself firmly on the path to self improvement and learned a few things that he didn't want to think about.   
  
The one girl, of all his fiancées that he had been willing to kill Saffron over hated his guts and didn't hesitate to tell him at every opportunity. She didn't care that he had saved her life, that she was the one he actually cared for above the others. No, she hated him for something that had happened on the day he first met her and had festered for over two years. He had at first just thought that her temper was a way of showing affection, like his old man showed his by insulting him and beating on him on a daily basis. Once her true feelings became clear he hadn't been able to stay around her as much as he had up until then. His very presence would send her into a rage that would have her attacking him for looking at her the wrong way. His other fiancées had thought it was finally their chance to win him over, but they had already lost in his mind. They were just as controlling and possessive as the first girl.   
  
After that things had just went down hill, then he had come across the entity or it had come across him. Even weeks later, Ranma still didn't fully understand what had happened to him, when he had been 'chosen' to receive the powers he did. Only that it had hurt, a lot, and that he had ended up on some other world that was full of pain and suffering that was in some ways even worse than in his world. The people here seemed to prefer living in dirt, using each other as pawns to get what they wanted and would do nearly anything to survive while the normal people suffered for it. He really didn't like this world at all; even his time with the X-men had shown him that those that seemed to be happy were not as happy as the normal people from his home dimension. They smiled and played, but they never seemed to enjoy it like the people he had seen back home in Nerima. There was always this dull glint in their eyes that proved that they had to be careful of something and never let their guard down.   
  
He knew that when life got that bad it was time to play harder and have even more fun just to balance out things so to speak. Training with the X-men had been the most fun he'd ever had and that had been dulled just a bit when he thought about why they trained in the first place. Those people had been in more fights and deadly situations that he could conceive of. They were battle hardened veterans that could fight on the edge for hours and not lose or even falter; even he hadn't gotten that good. He had bad mouthed them a bit, but at the same time learned that he didn't want to stay around them and become just like them. That wasn't the kind of life he wanted, instead he just wanted to go home. No matter how hard life was, back home, it was what he understood and he knew where he stood with people. Here he was just another loser trying to make his way in a world that had very little hope left in it. (1)  
  
**********  
  
Ranma sighed as he relaxed on the bench and looked around the area, the sun had set a couple hours ago and he was beginning to wonder where he should go from here. This area of New York was dangerous and he didn't want to think about what might happen to him if he lay down under a tree and started to sleep so deeply that people could attack him without him even waking up. He'd had enough of that at the Tendo's place with Akane and her thrice cursed bucket of cold water. Heck now that he really thought about it he usually woke up only when he hit the water of the Koi pond or with the bucket, he'd gotten used to it. The X-men had just let him sleep in until he woke up and that was usually around seven or so unless something made him get up earlier.  
  
He had left the X mansion two days ago and was just as confused now as he had been when he left. Xavier had taken his departure in stride, so had Logan. It was about what he had expected from the two men, but the two that confused him were Rogue and Scott. Rogue had begged him to stay so they could get him better prepared for their world and when they hadn't worked she had gotten mad at him. He still didn't understand why she started calling him names as he packed his bag to get on the road. Xavier had gotten amused by it though and just kept his mouth shut as she ranted.  
  
Then there had been Scott Summers and his oddities. Ranma didn't know what to think of the guy, at one moment you could be buddies and the next he was cursing at you for something weird. Ranma understood that ever since he had killed Soul Fire a couple weeks ago that he had gotten on Scott's bad side. He kept ranting about how the X-men don't kill and got mad when Ranma pointed out that he wasn't in fact an X-man. After two days of this Ranma had quietly asked Logan to have a talk with the guy. Scott hadn't said anything since, but every time they were in the same room Ranma had the oddest feeling that he needed to keep an eye out for a stray eye beam blast from the guy.   
  
After that came Beast, or Hank McCoy and all his experiments that had to be finished before he would allow him to leave. Ranma swore if he heard the term 'samples' again there was going to be a doctor with a couple of broken arms in the near future. He was also glad that he hadn't heard from Bishop either, that guy was all temper and no funny bone. After that Xavier had given him what he called a small book with a pen attached to it. The guy had written down the names and addresses of several people that might be able to help him get home and placed calls to each of them to let them know that he might be stopping by sometime in the near future. Most of the addresses were here in New York, but according to Xavier they were rarely ever at home for very long as they went about doing their jobs. His best bet though, according to Beast was Dr. Reed Richards who specialized in creating super scientific devices for various reasons.  
  
Beast even said that he knew for a fact that Richards had created a dimensional door that could readily take him home. Unfortunately he was one of the guys that were the hardest to get a hold of under even the best of circumstances, so Ranma was going to have to go directly to him at Four Freedoms Plaza. An area of New York City, where Reed Richards had bought all the buildings around his head quarters and converted to his personal use. Ranma had been thinking of the guy for two days now as he walked across the city at a slow walk and hoped he wasn't anything like Kuno. For some reason all the rich people he met were conceited and arrogant beyond belief with some eccentric habit about them. Kuno had been a pompous ass with a boken and poetry fetish, Chardain had that weird food things of his, and even Herb had been a half human half dragon descendent with an attitude that drove him up the wall.  
  
Sighing again, Ranma stretched as he sat on the bench and looked around the small park where he was resting a bit before he would head out for the next leg of his walk. He lay his head back and spent the time reading the energy levels of the area around him with his Ki, almost instantly he sensed some growing power levels heading his way. This didn't surprise him in the least; this whole city seemed to be filled with mutants of one form or another. He could feel them all around him as they moved about doing whatever they did on nights like this, though there were even more normal people around than mutants. Over the last two days he had gotten better at sensing them and spent a few hours trailing this mutant or that one as he moved about the city. As far as he could tell most of them tended to live rather normal lives and did what they could to make sure they didn't stand out to the general public. Then he had found out that when they started using whatever their mutant ability was they stood out even more.  
  
He had used it to spot Spiderman crawling up the side of a skyscraper, what had surprised him was when the guy stopped what he was doing and turned to look right at him for a brief second. Ranma wasn't sure how the guy had known he'd been spotted though and put it down to a well developed danger sense before moving on, it wasn't like he ever planned to meet the guy anyway. After that he hadn't spotted any of the known superheroes of the city, but plenty of mutants. One in every fifty people he passed had the slightly different aura that he considered to be a mutant, most of them looked basically normal as far as he could tell. Though, the girls tended to have oddly colored hair styles that reminded him of the Amazons. If they had red hair it was bright, bright red that could be spotted in the middle of a crowd.   
  
Jean Grey had bright red hair, Storm had that white hair, and Rogue had reddish brown with those white stripes in it. He hadn't thought much of it at the time, but as he took notice of all these mutants it seemed like they went out of their way to make themselves stand out in one fashion or another without standing out as a mutant. Shaking his head, he was thinking too much it seemed and he turned his head and focused on the mutant he could feel heading in this direction. This aura was different though, not as blatantly obvious or something, he wasn't sure just how though and he figured it would be better to head over there than to sit here and wait for some moron to attack him. Standing up he grabbed his pack and shouldered it so that it didn't get in the way of his coat.  
  
Jogging into the trees behind the bench, he broke into a run the instant he was out of sight and took to the trees. It had been a while since he had taken the time to tree jump, several months at least, but he could still bounce from tree to tree in a blur of motion. He ignored the small branches that tended to get in his way as he landed and bounced on, they couldn't hurt him even if he was unconscious. His skin had become very tough over the years and his recent power up had made him even stronger and faster. One thing he was grateful for was that the changes to his body were going to happen slowly, giving him time to adjust them. A power up under the right circumstances was fine, but when it wasn't earned he felt it would become more of a crutch than something useful. It was like a weapon, if he depended on it to much his regular skills would suffer for it.   
  
Just like what happened to Akane when she ate those Super Soba noodles or when she had gotten her hands on that enchanted dogi of hers that brought out her full potential. Akane had been nearly unstoppable with both of those power ups and she had wasted her time lording it over everyone else and proving that she was the strongest because of it. Not that he had been any better, but at the time he hadn't been thinking straight, so he had an excuse for his actions. He landed on a branch and stopped his run through the trees when he noticed that there was a large parking lot out beyond the tree. There was no way he would be able to keep from being seen if he went out there and from the looks of things, it might have to.  
  
This late at night there were still a few cars in the lot, but at the far end of it, near the kid's jungle gym and swings was what looked like a six foot tall walking lizard with its legs jointed backwards with a long tail. The thing was wearing red and white armor, holding what looked like an advanced gun of some kind, and hissing at a couple of kids who couldn't have been more than seven years old. One was a little boy who looked like he was trying to be brave and cower at the same time. He had sandy blonde hair and was wearing a pair of jeans, a blue shirt, and a blue jacket. The girl on the other hand was blonde and had her hair tied up in a couple of pig tails that hung down her back. She was wearing a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and had a large stick in her hands that she was trying to hit the thing with.  
  
"Back off Snark!" The girl yelled as she swung the stick back and forth.  
  
"Katie be careful..." The boy gasped a second later and looked even more frightened.  
  
The lizard dodged the stick with ease and brought its gun forward and pointed it right at the little girl. Ranma growled as he saw this, dropped his pack to the ground, and launched from his perch in the tree and sailed clear across the parking lot. He barely noticed as the girl's body started to glow a bright yellow color before he landed in front of the gun, grabbed it, and twisted it into a ball of broken and shattered pieces that he dropped on the ground. The lizard thing hopped back about five yards and looked pissed off at him as it hissed something at him. Ranma had to concentrate a little, but in-between the hissing were words that were barely understandable.  
  
"I've seen enough, go home or else you will get the beating of your life." Ranma snarled.  
  
"Pathetic human." The lizard hissed at him. "These two stole something from me and I want it back."  
  
"NO WE DIDN'T!" The two kids yelled.  
  
"I don't care what they did, you are the one that was pointing a gun at defenseless children and I won't let you get away with that." Ranma said. He didn't see the girl glare at him for a second.  
  
Hissing, the lizard like thing reached to its belt and pulled out a handful of small square objects. "Final warning human, get out of my way or you will die along with them."  
  
Ranma glared as he narrowed his eyes and let his battle aura form around him in a wave of blue fire. "I don't think so."  
  
Behind Ranma the boy gasped and backed up a couple of steps and muttered to himself. "The blue fire man..."  
  
"Not now Franklin!" Katie hissed.  
  
"But it's him, the guy I told you about..."  
  
"I know, now lets get through this then we can worry about that dream you had."   
  
"Alright." Franklin said.  
  
Ranma looked over his shoulder for a second while using his other eye to watch the lizard thing. "You two run and get out of here, I'm pretty sure I can take him so you should be safe and it's getting late."  
  
The girl looked like she was about to complain when the boy nodded and grabbed her arm. "Right, let's go Katie."  
  
"But?!"   
  
Ranma flared his aura a little brighter as he turned back to the lizard and started slowly walking forward. For a brief moment he wondered where the parents were while their kids were out so late, and then shrugged it off. They must have snuck out and stumbled across this thing by accident. Sneaking away from one's parent wasn't exactly something he was unfamiliar with. He glared at the thing as it started to side step a little and it held up a couple of those small boxes. "Get out of here! This is your final warning." Ranma growled.  
  
"You think you can take on the Great Snark Empire?" It hissed.  
  
  
  
"I don't care what you are, only that you were trying to hurt a couple of kids."  
  
The Snark gave a hissing laugh. "You think those two are just little kids? They both possess powers you can not even imagine with your feeble brain, human."  
  
Recalling that he had been feeling a build up of power before he showed up, Ranma wondered if one of those two kids had been the cause. He had been thinking that it was this thing that he sensed, but now that he took a closer look he could tell that it didn't have the right kind of aura. It was an alien, there was no denying that, but other than that it didn't have that extra flare that he had come to recognize from someone using a power. "Yeah right."   
  
"You mock me?!" The Lizard yelled.  
  
"Listen bean stalk, just go away and don't come back."   
  
"How dare you!"  
  
Ranma just smirked and wondered why it was always easy to rile someone up using and insult or three. "I doubt you are very dangerous anyway, I mean those kids were causing you problems before I got here and they didn't look all that dangerous to me."  
  
"AGHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! SNAAAAAAARRRLLL!" The lizard bellowed and threw the first hand full of squares. It grinned and showed off a lot of very sharp pointy teeth. "DIE!"  
  
Yawning a little, Ranma ignored the squares and dodged around them with ease. He wasn't at all surprised when they stared exploding once he was past them. His hands shot forward and he fired off a controlled burst of Ki that flashed between the two and slammed into the lizard and blew it off its feet. Surprisingly the thing didn't drop the other handful of explosives it had in its other hand like Ranma had expected. He jumped at the thing just as it rolled over backwards and used its oddly hinged legs go vault over a car and threw the explosives while it was moving. They rained down all around Ranma as he moved to stop his forward movement and started to go off.   
  
Laughing, the Snark landed and pulled out a hand held blaster and fired several shots into the cloud of smoke that its explosives had created. "Pathetic human, you will have to do better than that to defeat...ARGHAAAAAAAAA!"  
  
Dressed in a yellow body suit with a starburst on the chest and wearing silver boots, Katie stepped out from behind the car. Her stomach is giving off a bit of smoke from where she had just fired off a large ball of energy to take down the Snark. She had a major dislike for the things and rarely hesitated to make sure they left in a lot of pain when she was around. She glanced over at the smoke and wondered if she would have to call an ambulance. Franklin, who was under the car, crawled out just as Ranma walked out of the cloud of smoke limping a little. There is a large hole in his pants on his upper left thigh that is smoking and very red, though this doesn't stop him from noticing that the two kids are back.  
  
"I thought I told you two to go away, not change your clothes." Ranma muttered, he was in pain so he didn't give a damn about being polite at the moment.  
  
Katie resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him. "I've fought these things several times and not gotten hurt at all, yet you..." She let the statement trail off and grinned, then suddenly frowned as Ranma laughed a little.  
  
"Heh, I got a bit careless and made a mistake. Won't happen again."  
  
"Well I already took care of him." Stated the girl with a flourish as she presented the smoking body of the lizard thing.  
  
"Aw man, it was just getting interesting too." Ranma muttered as he relaxed a little. He could tell that the thing was still alive by its aura, but in a lot of pain from whatever the girl had done to it.  
  
"Katie that was mean!" The boy yelled.  
  
"Was not!"  
  
"Was too!"  
  
"Was not!"  
  
"Was too!"  
  
Sweat dropping, Ranma limped over to the thing to make sure it wouldn't be anymore of a threat. Its armor had been completely melted by what the girl did and a good two thirds of its skin was burned.   
  
"What the heck is this thing anyway?"  
  
"That's a Snark!" The boy said suddenly.  
  
"I've never heard of them." Ranma said.  
  
"They kidnapped me and my family a few years ago." Katie said and lost a bit of her enthusiasm as she recalled that first adventure and what had later happened.  
  
"And you beat them up!" Franklin crowed with a big grin.  
  
"Well yeah!" Katie said happily.  
  
"Heh, well what do you usually do with these things when you defeat them?" Asked Ranma as he absently massaged his burned leg to try and get it to stop hurting.  
  
Katie turned to look at the smoldering Snark and glared at it. "They usually come in groups and take the ones we defeat with them when they leave."  
  
"Oh?" Ranma said and looked around with his senses to see if anymore of these things were hiding in the bushes. "I don't sense anymore of them and I could feel this guy from over a mile away."  
  
"He's by himself?!" Katie gasped.  
  
Suddenly the body started twitching several seconds and gave the kids quite a scare as it burst into flames and was cremated in a matter of a few seconds. They watched as the flames died down and the ashes seemed to blow away on a non-existent wind. Ranma blinked and went over to tap the left over dust with his toe and watched as even this vanished from sight a few seconds later. "Whoa!"  
  
"They've never done THAT before!" Katie yelled.  
  
"Weird." Franklin muttered half to himself.  
  
"Well that takes care of that problem." Ranma said. "Now let's get you kids home before your parents begin to worry."  
  
"But...but...it's only eight at night..." Katie nervously stuttered as she looked around frantically.  
  
"Now, now, it is getting kind of late and this park isn't safe for adults to be in at night let alone kids. Let's get you home before anything else happens."  
  
"I can't do that!" Katie yelled.  
  
"Why not?" Ranma asked in confusion.  
  
"I can't just take you to my house! I have a secret identity to protect you know, I'm The Destroyer!" Katie yelled and posed.  
  
"Right, right, your name isn't Katie. It's Destroyer, whatever, now get moving so we can get you home before anything else happens."  
  
"But...but...but..." Katie sputtered as Ranma waved her towards the sidewalk and glanced at Franklin, who was just nodding happily.  
  
"See, your boyfriend agrees." Ranma said with a smirk.   
  
"WHAT?!!" Katie screamed. "He's not my Boyfriend! Yuck! That's gross!"  
  
Franklin glanced at Katie and blushed a little, but nodded quickly when she glared at him with that look that only girls seem to be able to pull off. Then she turned it on Ranma and he sweat dropped and backed up a couple of steps. "YOU!"  
  
"Hehehe, it was just a little teasing, no need to get mad." He made some warding gestures.  
  
"HUMPH!"   
  
"Well lets get you home kid, I was serous about that."   
  
Katie sighed and started walking; she was trying to think of a way to get rid of the guy that had helped her out. She didn't want her siblings to know about this, he already knew her name because of Franklin's mouth. Blasted Tattle Tale, now she would have to keep him from finding out who the rest of them were. Walking slowly, she wished that she still had the flight power and could just fly away. Blasting the guy flitted across her mind for a brief second but that thought was quickly blasted out of existence. Every few seconds she would glare at him out of the corner of her eye just to make sure he wasn't pulling any funny stuff.  
  
Walking along beside the girl, Ranma tried not to laugh as the girl's face went through a bunch of expressions as she thought about something. He grinned though and got a glare out of her that reminded him of Akane for some reason. The boy just followed along as if he was having a grand adventure, it reminded him of the first couple of months he'd been on the road with his old man. Everyday had brought about new sights that he had just loved to see, met new people, and learned new techniques from his school. He tried not to think of the beatings that had started after about six months of travel, to toughen him up supposedly, though Ranma still had his doubts about that.   
  
"You changed your clothes somehow kid; you might as well change back if you can that way I can just leave you at the door with your parents. Then I can take Franklin here home as well."  
  
"He's spending the weekend at my place." Katie mumbled as she sighed. "Costume: Off"  
  
Ranma didn't' even blink as the girl's odd clothing flared with light and she was suddenly wearing her shorts and t-shirt again. "So are we close to your house?"  
  
The boy leaned over to whisper something in the girl's ear that made her glare at him some more.  
  
"See that large apartment building over there?" Katie pointed.  
  
"Yep."  
  
"I'm not taking you any farther."  
  
Glancing down at the stubborn little girl, Ranma raised an eyebrow. "Oh really?"  
  
She nodded and stuck her chin out, prepared to fight at this point. "Yep."  
  
"Katie! Franklin!"   
  
They all turned to see a woman with long dirty blond hair walking up to them looking really relieved. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a baggy red short sleeved shirt. Ranma glanced at the girl and saw something like embarrassment on her face, though he was really bad at reading emotions, this kid seemed to pretty bad about hiding things. The boy just ran forward and hugged the woman's leg and laughed. The woman stopped a few feet away and gave Ranma an odd look as she glanced over him with his damaged clothes and a back pack slung over one shoulder.  
  
"Who are you?" She asked.  
  
"Ranma Saotome."  
  
"Momma." Katie said with a sniffle.  
  
"I'm Mrs. Powers."  
  
"I found the kids running around the park after dark and decided to get them back home before something happened to them." Ranma said.   
  
"Something happened at the park?"  
  
"Just a fight." Ranma said with a shrug.  
  
"A Fight!?!" Mrs. Powers gasped.   
  
Ranma could tell that she didn't quite believe him, so he gestured to his injured leg with a sigh. "One of them got in a lucky shot when I let my guard down a little."  
  
Mrs. Powers glanced down at his leg and she gasps, she had been paying so much attention to her daughter that she hadn't even really noticed that this guy was injured. "How in the world did you get a wound like that? It looks like a burn..."  
  
Sweat dropping, Ranma tried to think of a plausible excuse to cover the wound and not reveal that the kids had helped him.  
  
"It was a guy tossing around these fire crackers, one of them hit Ranma on the leg." Katie lied.  
  
Ranma nodded and wondered where this kid had learned to lie so effectively, maybe she wasn't so bad at it after all. "Right, firecracker."  
  
"But I thought there was a fight?"  
  
Ranma nodded and cracked his knuckles. "There was, I beat the guy up for endangering a couple of kids."  
  
"Oh! Well thank you for helping out my daughter." Mrs. Powers said with a grin.  
  
"No problem." Ranma muttered as the girls' mother dragged the two kids off while giving him glances over her shoulder ever few feet to make sure he wasn't following them. "Heh, probably think I'm some weirdo or something like that."  
  
'Now I have to figure out how to get to Four Freedom's Plaza from here' He thought as he looked around and realized that once again, he had pulled a Ryoga. Where the hell was he now?  
  
**********  
  
To Be Continued...  
  
Ending Notes - If you didn't know who the crossover is, it's a couple of the kids from Power Pack, it ran from 84-89, then Marvel decided that it wasn't selling enough so they used the last 8 issues to completely slaughter the comic and make sure that it would never be heard from again. Then they tossed the rotting corpse out in the in some unused portion of the marvel studios and refused to sell the rights to the name for the next two decades as Rabid fans tried to bring back a book that was loved by so many. I'm not bitter about it, nope, not me.  
  
  
  
I still go through and occationally reread the series every now and then to remind myself that Marvel used to have a lot of good titles around. Stress used to.  
  
(1) Ah, Angst...I don't know what it is with X-men, but the Angst just seems to roll off them in waves. Ranma is a bit depressed after leaving the X-men and these were some of his thoughts of what happened to him. Notice he doesn't even want to mention Akane's name. Ryoga would love to see Ranma like this wouldn't he? Heh ^_^ 


	6. Prime Attitude II It's Clobbering Time!

**********  
  
Prime Attitude II  
  
Chapter 01 – Its Clobbering Time!  
  
Cory D. Rose  
  
ertle2@msn.com  
  
(c) 2003  
  
**********  
  
Four Freedom's Plaza was quite big and the whole area reminded Ranma of several places he'd seen in Tokyo, nearly one hundred stories high and impossible to see the top no matter how hard you looked. Even then, he was still about a block from the place as the first rays of the sun crested over the city. Seeing the top of the building where a giant number four built right into the side of the building was quite a sight, and then he noticed that the 'four' was on all four sides of the building.   
  
From this distance, the building almost seemed to gleam in the early morning light as he approached it with a steady pace, and wondered if someone who owned a building like this would even be able to help him. He had a feeling that getting in to see this Richards character would be a little harder than he thought, but he would still give it a shot. He had to get home. He had a promise to keep.  
  
He shook his head and remembered that Xavier had told him that contacting Reed Richards was very hard unless you knew him personally. The professor had even told him that it might take several tries before he even got past the man's robotic secretary. Ranma just hoped that Xavier had remembered to call and let Richards know that he was coming to see him. As he got closer to the building he could almost feel some kind of energy around the building that made the city feel slightly different.   
  
The people around him, who were out walking this early in the morning, seemed to feel it unconsciously as well. It was as if some line was drawn around the building itself. A person would walk down the street, pass though the invisible barrier and suddenly stand a little taller or walk a little more confidently. There was feeling of power about the building that he'd never sensed before and he wondered where it came from. Were these the kind of people he could trust?   
  
He wasn't really sure, but he wouldn't know until he reached the building and got inside to make sure for himself. It didn't take him long to make it to the building and enter through the spinning glass doors. He was greeted by a large open lobby, tiled in shiny black tile and dozens of support beams, and not a single person in sight. There was a sign by the elevators that told him that he needed to go to the thirtieth floor if he wanted to even have a chance to talk to Richards.   
  
With any luck he would be home in just a few hours. He wandered over to the elevators and chose one at random. The ride up to the thirtieth floor was uneventful, but he did realize that it was just after six in the morning and he might have to wait a couple of hours to even talk to anybody, but he didn't mind. Then, just as he was about to reach his destination the elevator suddenly slowed to a stop between the fifteen and sixteenth floors and the lights in the ceiling flickered a couple of times.  
  
Then the elevator reversed direction and descended back to the first floor to let him out. He hit a couple of buttons, but the elevator refused to even close its doors. So he stepped out of the elevator to check and see if one of the other elevators would work, but the doors snapped shut before he was even a foot away from the door. Then he heard all of the elevators rise up into the building. "What the hell is going on?"  
  
"Thank you for visiting Four Freedom's Plaza, please come again during regular business hours." A computerized voice said from a speaker just above the elevator.  
  
Ranma glared at the speaker for a second and considered forcing the matter, but then he recalled what Xavier had said about him being persistent. If the arrogant jerk didn't want to see him, he would just have to make the guy do it, or break in and threaten him a little. He was probably like an older version of Gosenkugi after all, and all geeks were the same as far as he was concerned.   
  
Then he calmed down, recalled what Xavier told him about overreacting to things, and remembered Bishop's over reaction to his little trick. His hands still felt dirty. How overreaction and hate was the number one cause of mutant dislike, so he needed to be careful not to cause a big problem. Reed Richards liked his privacy and was a very busy man and Ranma knew getting in to see him would a long shot.   
  
"I'll find a different way then, it's not like I'm in that much of a hurry, though I might punch him one just to teach him a lesson about being rude to people." Ranma muttered to himself as he turned around and walked out of the building, and then he stopped and looked at the ceiling. Somewhere above him was an aura of immense power, the biggest aura yet.  
  
"That aura is big and why is it familiar?"   
  
"Howdy kid, can I help you?"  
  
Turning around, he noticed that the doorman was standing right behind him, dressed in a heavy long coat of deep red with large silver buttons down one side, and appeared to be an elderly man. Ranma was a bit surprised that he hadn't spotted the guy earlier, though he hadn't been looking for him either. "Ah, I need to talk to Reed Richards. There is a chance he has something that might help me."  
  
"Did you have an early morning appointment?"  
  
"No, I didn't realize how early I was until a little while ago."  
  
"He sees people at around mid morning unless something is going on or he's out with the team saving the world."  
  
"Ah…"  
  
"Please come back then." The old man said as he led Ranma over to the door and gently shoved him out of the building.  
  
"But…" Ranma tried to say, but the door closed in his face just as the old man locked it and waved goodbye. He growled and stomped off.  
  
**********  
  
A Dream in the night can bring the most unexpected terrors.  
  
A black and white colored Ranma stood in the middle of the street with a massive aura of blue energy flaring as he looked around in alarm. His eyes were glowing even brighter than his aura, so bright they were almost impossible to look at. He gazed into the sky as a shadow of black fire descends from the heavens like a falling meteor, slamming into him with the force of a bomb.   
  
Shattering the ground and levelling every building for several blocks in ever direction in utter silence as an alien shadow reflected off the sky and laughed evilly. The silent destruction is nothing as Ranma's aura flickered and died for just a second, only to flare up again as a hundred times bigger, but there is a glint of evil in his eyes as he slowly walked out of the crater and people run from him in terror. The evil shadow reflecting off of him as he walks down the devastated street walking on the bodies of the dead.  
  
"EGHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Franklin yelled as his eyes snap open.  
  
He shivered and cowered down below his sheets to find some kind of comfort in his large empty bed. The door slammed open and his mother came running in looking around frantically.   
  
"Franklin! Are you alright?!" She gasped as she threw the covers off and wrapped him in a hug. "What happened, why did you scream?"  
  
"I had a dream…"  
  
"It was only a nightmare, thank god…" She muttered in relief.  
  
"It was True Dream, momma."  
  
Sue Richards didn't seem to hear him though, this was a common occurrence with his parents, but Franklin didn't think much of it. He was only six years old; he didn't know better and thought it was normal. "The Ghost man is going to hurt the Blue Fire Man, momma."  
  
She continued to hold him for a few minutes before Franklin drifted off to sleep again. Reed Richard's walked into the room a few seconds later, smoking his pipe, and looked down on his wife and son. "How is he?"  
  
"He's fine now, just sleeping."  
  
"What was he talking about?"  
  
"He had another dream."  
  
"A regular one?"  
  
"No, I think it was one of those dreams, the one's that have you so worried and drive Jarvis up a wall in worry. What are we going to do if this gets any worse; you know what he did last time."  
  
"No matter how long we wait his power just keeps growing. We just need to be careful; those Power kids have been a good influence on him. Maybe they can help him out with these dreams as well, help to calm him down when he has them and such."  
  
"No…" Sue said. "I will not involve those children in our problem."  
  
"Then we will just have to be careful and let him gain the control he needs."  
  
**********  
  
Breakfast burritos were not the best food in the world, but Ranma was hungry enough to eat them by the dozen. He tossed several wrappers in the trash as he walked down the street still eating his last half dozen. For some reason he was starving and needed a lot of food to keep his body going. After getting tossed out of Four Freedom's plaza he didn't know what to do, but figured he could walk around for a while before deciding to buy the burritos at a store down the street. Getting in to see Reed Richards was going to be a lot harder than he first thought.   
  
Sure he could force his way in, blowing up everything in sight and starting a small war, but that probably wouldn't get him what he wanted. Being with the X Men taught him that much, force didn't always work, especially in this world. His old man would have been amazed at such a thought, then stolen the nearest plate of food and ran for it. That meant he would take his time and see what happened, but first, he needed to finish breakfast.  
  
He found a bench and spent a few minutes relaxing as he finished his food and watched the world move by him in a bit of shock. Long ago he'd learned that big cities meant lots of people, even in Tokyo, there was something about New York that made it feel like it was about to explode. Large crowds of unwashed people stumbled by the bench stinking of various kinds of alcohol or other unsavory things.   
  
How these people could stand living in that kind of filth shocked him even more. If there was one thing he disliked, it was being dirty. These people seemed to take it to the next level and it appeared that they were proud of it. No wonder Americans were had such a strange reputation around the world. He noticed the traffic was beginning to pick up as soon as sat there. With a sigh he stood up and made sure someone wasn't about to drop down on him from above and picked up his pack.   
  
"You!"   
  
Ranma spun around, taking a quick defensive stance as he instantly thought Ryoga was going to appear out of nowhere. Instead, he found himself a few feet away from the little blonde girl he'd met the day before. She was glaring at him in a rather familiar way, had her hands on her hips, and looked like she wanted to deck him. He relaxed and looked down at her for a second. "Katie wasn't it?"  
  
"Geeze, it hasn't even been twelve hours and you can't recall what my name is?" She muttered and pouted a bit.  
  
Standing just behind Katie were three other kids of various ages, two boys and a girl. The tallest, a boy, glanced at Ranma and gave him a weird look. "Is this the guy you were telling us about last night Katie?"  
  
"That's him Alex." Katie said.  
  
"He doesn't look all that tuff." Jack muttered under his breath and looked away. Ranma almost smirked at the kid.   
  
"I'm Julie Power." Julie said and smiled at Ranma.   
  
He glanced over the group and noticed that they were all giving off an aura that stood out in his senses. Katie had the strongest of the four; he was a bit surprised about that. The next strongest was the oldest boy, Alex. Then Jack was the third strongest, and finally Julie. Whatever their powers were their ages didn't seem to have anything to with their strength.   
  
"So kids, what brings you out here this early in the morning?" Ranma asked.  
  
"We're just heading to school, it is Monday." Katie explained. "We better get going too, the first bell is going to go off here pretty soon."  
  
"We have a few minutes yet." Alex said.   
  
"Yeah, it's not every day that some guy saves your sister." Jack said as he took a closer look at Ranma.  
  
"He took on a Snark, that's no small feat."  
  
Ranma just smirked; he always enjoyed it when someone complimented his skills. He was about to respond when he sensed something and turned to look across the street into an alley covered in early morning shadows. His danger sense was telling him to watch out for an attack, but the alley was empty. "You kids get out of here, there's something wrong."   
  
The oldest, Alex looked across the street. "I don't see anything."  
  
"I'm not sure what it is, but there is something dangerous over there."  
  
Now all the kids were looking. Ranma could feel something looking at him, something dangerous. Alex and Jack backed up a few feet and started looking around to see of they could spot something that Ranma was missing, but all they could see were a few people walking along the sidewalk.   
  
"There's nothing here Ranma." Katie said, though she was starting to get nervous.  
  
Then Alex saw it and pointed. "There at the edge of that trash can across the street…" He yelled as a distortion in the air seemed to swirl around something and a red bolt of energy flew across the street.   
  
With a burst of blue energy around his hand, Ranma knocked the bolt into the ground where it scorched the sidewalk and cracked it a little. He growled as he shook his hand and the kids all give him wide eyed looks of shock. "What the hell was that?"   
  
"A blaster." Alex said. "Snarks use them all the time."  
  
"I see the distortion now, when he holds still I lose track of him, but the instant he moves around…" He swatted another bolt to the side, right into the building behind them. "I can see him."  
  
Katie looked around Ranma's leg and glared at the nearly invisible Snark. "Why is he still hiding?"  
  
"We need to stop him before he has a chance to hurt anyone." Julie said and the kids all looked nervously at Ranma.   
  
Ranma didn't seem to notice. "You kids all have powers, I'd advise using them if you have to."  
  
"W-what are you t-talking about?" Julie stuttered out in shock and glanced at her brothers.  
  
"I can sense your abilities, if you don't know about them you should figure them out quickly." Ranma snapped. "He's tired of hiding; I can see him moving now…"  
  
The invisible Snark swirled into view as his invisibility vanished. Unlike a normal Snark, this one was at least twice as big and looked mean enough to break them into little broken bits. The kids recognized it as a commander, a Snark leader that led troops into battle.  
  
"Time to die." It hissed, brought its blaster up and pressed a button.  
  
"Ranma, he's just increased that thing's power output, those bolts are capable of killing us now. I think he had it set on stun before, but I don't know why."  
  
"Where are the others?" Julie asked as she looked around. "Where's there's one there are usually two or three more."  
  
Katie growled and fired a quick ball of energy from her stomach, but the Snark dropped and rolled before it could hit. Then it was up and sent a couple more bolts of energy flying across the street. That was all the people around them needed to see before they started to run. Once was and accident or but more than once meant they were all in danger and the whole block cleared of people in seconds.   
  
Ranma seemed to flicker as the thing fired another volley; he grabbed Jack and Julie and pulled them out of the way before they could be hit, though Julie got pulled out of the air before she could get more than a few inches off the ground. The brick wall behind them developed a series of smoking holes. Alex picked up the bench and threw it across the street, but the Snark blew it out of the air before it could hit. Then over a dozen of the things appeared from all around them.   
  
"We need to get out of here." Ranma snapped. "Down that alley, we can go over the wall."  
  
The Power kids looked at each other, shrugged, and nodded. "COSTUME'S ON!"  
  
Blinking, Ranma watches as the kid's clothes distort and swirl around them, leaving them in a copy of the outfit he'd seen Katie wearing the day before. Though they were different colors. Katie's was still yellowish gold with silver boots. Jack's outfit was a blue with silver boots, Julie's was red, and Alex's outfit was white. There were these simple looking pictures on their chests that Ranma didn't recognize.   
  
Alex's attitude seemed to change as the costume appeared, making him more mature in some way that was impossible to describe. Counterweight pointed at the Snark as it moved to get to it's feet. "Destroyer! Blast the ground at his feet. Mass Master we need cover, Starstreak let's get to the top of that…"   
  
They moved quick, Ranma had to give them that, but as his danger sense warned him of an attack from off to the side. His aura flared and he turned just as a blaster shot took him in the stomach and blasted him off his feet. "Crap!"  
  
"Ranma!" The kids yelled.  
  
Within seconds, it was chaos as Destroyer fired a blast at the ground and blew up the street at the Snarks feet just before Mass Master turned into a cloud of fog and blanked the whole street. Several Snarks were sent tumbling before they vanished. Ranma barely noticed as he flew into the fog as Starstreak grabbed Counterweight's hand to lift them of the ground in a stream of rainbow colored energy.  
  
He could sense the kid's auras as they moved about the fog, though being within the aura of one of them was a bit hard to adjust to at first, but he adapted quickly. The Snake monsters had odd auras, whatever they using to mask their bodies from sight was hiding their auras as well. He wasn't sure what to do about that, but he would have to worry about it later on.   
  
Energy bolts fired into the fog from three different directions as all the kids dived for cover. Destroyer fired out multiple blasts from her stomach as she ran through edges of the fog, grabbed the spout of a fire hydrant, disintegrated the cap, sent a blast of water into the street, and knocked a Snark off his feet.   
  
Ranma rolled to his feet and was a bit surprised how close the X Men's danger room had gotten when he used it for training for a situation like this. He smirked as he saw the kids blasting the hell out of the Snarks they could see, dropping two or three every few seconds, then he saw the water from the fire hydrant and edged away from it. He flared his aura a second later, vaporizing the water on his body, and fired a blast down the street, and took out one of the Snarks before it could shoot Julie.   
  
"We need to find a better place to fight, there's not enough room in this alley!" Counterweight yelled from above them as he threw a completely full dumpster down the street and took out a few more Snarks, even some invisible ones.   
  
"There's an alley down the street, a big one with a dead end we can use!" Jack, Mass Master said.  
  
"Go!" Counterweight yelled as Starstreak took off down the street.   
  
Destroyer quickly disintegrated some of the debris all around her and sent a series of fireballs sailing down the street. They exploded and blew several Snarks off their feet, buying them the few seconds they needed to regroup and run down the street. As they ran Ranma was really beginning to wonder where they were all coming from, this was too organized to be a spur of the moment attack.   
  
That and the kids were fighting like a group of well trained fighters, covering each other's back and making sure that no one got hurt while they fought, he was a bit amazed.  
  
The Snarks took a second to regroup as well before they moved after them, but Ranma took a second to launch himself at the closest one and kicked it in the head, it was hard enough to stagger even Ryoga. It went down with a cry and a shower of missing teeth, rendering it instantly unconscious.   
  
Ranma just took a second to smirk at the rest of them before he took off after the kids, he'd have to the rest of the thing's teeth out of his shin when he had a chance. Several blaster shots were fired after him, but he dodged them easily and ducked into the fog filled alley after the kids.   
  
"Are you kids alright?" Ranma asked as he turned the dog leg and ended up at the end of the alley where the kids were discussing something.   
  
"Yeah, those things set up a trap." Jack said as he reformed into a solid form, though the fog still remained.   
  
"We've just got a few seconds before they get here. They have to be stopped." Alex said as he looked over at a nearby trashcan.   
  
"They've got a glass jaw." Ranma said. "Took one down with a single punch."  
  
"It's too bad we always meet up with them in groups like this." Julie said as she stretched. I get so tired of fighting these things."   
  
There's only a few of them left now, we should take them down quickly, and then we might actually make it to school on time."  
  
"Yeah right." Jack muttered and punched his a foggy fist into his palm. "I'd rather kick Snark butt."  
  
Ranma laughed as he watched the corner for any sign of the things. "Where are they?"  
  
"They'll come." Alex said.  
  
"Those stupid things never give up, no matter how many times we kick their tails." Jack's voice said from out of the cloud of fog all around them.  
  
"That's fine with me, they have glass jaws, one good hit and they go down with no problems." Ranma said.   
  
"Humph! No matter how old they are boys are still boys." Julie muttered from a few feet away as she and Katie watched the end of the alley for any sign of movement.   
  
"You should have heard him bragging last night." Destroyer muttered and disintegrated some bags of trash piled up next to the building.  
  
Ranma looked around as he realized that they should have been fighting by then, but the lizard things weren't there to fight. "Where the heck are they?"  
  
"You're right, something isn't right." Alex muttered as he glanced around, this feels like that time I was with the Warriors…"  
  
"Alex, if you mention that time one more time I'm going to knock your block off." Julie muttered.  
  
An explosion went off above them and the echoing laugh of a Snark as it moved around above them. Ranma and the others spun around and looked up at the flaming wreckage of a large water tower as it went up in a ball of flame. Its weight slowly made its damaged supports give way and shatter, dumping water on them from three stories up. The sound would have woken the dead. Cursing, Ranma realized he'd just made mistake that the X Men had tried to teach him not to make.  
  
Obviously he hadn't learned the lesson well enough. Blue fire flared around his body as he suddenly realized that four children were about to be buried under a lot of debris. He shot forward faster than he'd ever moved before, grabbing Alex and Katie before they could even utter a word. Blue fire surrounded him as he channelled the power to his legs and shot off in the direction Julie was flying.  
  
He wasn't too worried about the other boy; he was all smoke, that wouldn't be injured by the falling water and wood as it slammed into the ground. Even with all his speed, he wasn't faster than the outer edge of the water as it careened into his back and he felt the change overtake him. In his arms, Katie's eyes widened as she felt Ranma's body shift from hard muscle to something else. She yelled as he flipped in mid air, rebounded off a piece of debris, and raced down the alley as a wall of water surged after them.   
  
"Blasted lizards!" Jack yelled out.  
  
Ranma was a little preoccupied as she ran, so she didn't see Counterweight grab her shirt a little tighter. It came as a complete surprise when he yanked them into the air above the street. She nearly dropped the kids as they sailed into the air and the ground at the end of the alley erupted into a burst of laser fire. "What the hell?!"  
  
"Ranma, I've made us light, just get us to the top of that building over there!" Alex yelled as he pointed down the street. He still hadn't noticed Ranma's change, but Katie had, and she was starting to panic a little.   
  
Suddenly Starstreak came up behind them, grabbed onto the back of Ranma's shirt, and dragged them to the top of the building. Ranma landed heavily as Alex restored their weight, but she managed to do it without causing them any harm.   
  
"Where is…" Ranma asked, but the two of them jumped back in shock as they realized that Ranma wasn't there anymore. Katie just looked confused as she looked around at Ranma from behind Julie.  
  
"Who are you?!" Katie yelled and started to glow. "Where's Ranma?"  
  
Ranma gave her a confused look for a second, then slapped her forehead and sighed. "I am Ranma, I've got this…"  
  
"Ranma is a boy and you couldn't be a boy even if you wanted to." Julie said and glared at him.  
  
"Don't make us hurt you, where is Ranma? Is this a trick by the Snarks?"   
  
"I am Ranma." Ranma said.  
  
"Liar!" Destroyer yelled and fired a ball of energy at Ranma.   
  
"Katie no!" Alex yelled, but Ranma casually flipped over the ball, landed on the edge of the roof and crouched down.   
  
"I think it would best if I got out of here if you aren't going to listen to reason." Ranma said.   
  
Counterweight glanced at Ranma and narrowed his eyes. "You aren't going anywhere until we figure out what happened to our friend."  
  
A weight settled over Ranma and he fell forward onto the roof and struggled to sit up. "What…"  
  
"You just stay there." Destroyer said.  
  
Grunting, Ranma managed to stand up under the weight the boy was exerting against her. She glanced at him and saw the surprised look on his face. Her blue aura flared around her for a second and the weight lessoned a little as she made herself stronger. "Those Snarks are still here; don't you think we should take care of them first?"  
  
"The Snarks!" Katie yelled and ran over to the edge of the building. "What are we going to do?"  
  
Ranma felt the weight field lift, leaving her free enough to run if she wanted to. Instead she turned and looked down at the street where she spotted several Snarks moving along the street. Most of the people had left the area earlier so they didn't have to worry about hurting them, but Ranma had a feeling these kids might react like the X Men did. "We can worry about where I came from later; right now we need to stop those things."  
  
"We have to make them go back to their ship, but I still don't understand why they are here in the first place." Alex said. "They promised to leave us alone."  
  
"I've found very few people ever keep their promises." Ranma muttered as he continued to watch the Snarks. "I count over fifteen of them down there and we need to stop them before they try to do something more drastic than tipping over a water tower."  
  
"I say we go down there and beat them up." Mass Master snarled.  
  
"We don't need to go that far…" Alex started.  
  
"I think that is exactly what we should do too." Ranma said.  
  
"What?!" The kids yelled.  
  
"They think we are running from them. A frontal attack will catch them completely by surprise, give us the advantage, and give us a chance to make sure they won't bother us again."  
  
"I don't know." Alex said hesitantly.  
  
"Sounds good to me." Jack said as he hopped over the side of the building, turned to smoke, and then condensed down into a very small form. He slammed feet first into a Snark's nose snout.   
  
Ranma blinked a couple of times as the Snark collapsed to the ground, completely out cold. "Well there's something you don't see every day."  
  
"I don't know why, but they all just took off and vanished after I knocked that one out." Jack told them as he quickly reformed on the roof beside them.  
  
"I've never seen the Snarks act like this before, but at least they're gone." Alex said.  
  
"We need to get to school." Starstreak said and eyed Ranma again. "But I'd like to know who this girl is and where the heck Ranma got to."  
  
"I am Ranma; I picked up this curse a while back that turns me into a girl whenever I get hit with cold water." She said with a shrug. "No big deal, I just need to get some hot water to change back into a guy."  
  
"A curse? You don't expect us to believe that do you?" Alex asked.  
  
"I don't care what you think about it." Ranma snapped back as she decided that it was time to leave. She hopped off the top of the building, dropped to the ground below, and landed easily.   
  
Katie ran over to the edge and looked down at Ranma as the girl walked away with her hands in her pockets. "We have to talk to her!"  
  
"Not now Katie, we need to fly if we are going to make it to school in time. We can look for her after school, there can't be that many red headed girls running around that look like she does."  
  
"Do you really think that is Ranma? I've never heard of a mutant power that could make a guy turn into a girl with cold water."  
  
"What are we going to do about those Snarks? I don't like this at all, they've got something planned."  
  
"What can we do?" Jack muttered as he turned to smoke. "Let's get down into that alley there, change our clothes, and get to school. I don't want to put up with another of Dad's lectures today."  
  
"Let's go, we can talk about Ranma later as well Katie, he or she has some explaining to do if we see her again."  
  
**********  
  
The park was relatively small, but big enough to attract a hungry morning crowd as a food cart sold them an early morning breakfast. Water logged and still female, Ranma stalked through crowd as she looked around for a place to sit and think. She had managed to go several days now without transforming, heck almost two solid weeks, but then it had to happen right in the middle of a fight and ruin everything.   
  
She wasn't aware of it, but her damp clothing and her unbound hair was attracting the notice of a good number of people. They didn't seem to notice that she was angry, or that she was moving faster than the people around her, all they saw was a good looking girl in a wet shirt. A guy put his game face on and started towards her, but then stopped as Ranma suddenly glared at him from the corner of her eyes. He caught a brief flare of blue fire and decided that he'd better lay off.   
  
Turning pale, he turned around and quickly made his way out of the park and down the street before he broke into a run and vanished. Ranma didn't even realize that she'd done anything other than glare at the unclean aura she'd just sensed heading her way. Grinding her teeth, she made her way over to an empty park bench, sat down with a sigh, and hung her head.   
  
She closed her eyes and let her mind wander again and almost immediately felt the presence of a powerful mutant in the area. Without bothering to look up she used her senses to scan it a little more and realized that it was actually a mixture of a number of things. Not only was the mutant aura there, but when she looked a little closer she could sense its life aura as well. It just took a little more concentration to separate the two. Whomever the aura belonged to she could sense power and arrogance to some degree, as if the two were intertwined within his body, feeding off of each other.  
  
Then she sat up, glanced towards the line of people waiting to buy some food, and spotted him. It wasn't all that hard really; his whole arm was on fire as he used the flames to make little sculptures for a pair of blushing girls. Even living at the Tendo's place Ranma hadn't run into too many playboy types, but those that crossed her path paid for it with a swift kick between the legs and this guy appeared fit that description to a tee. She growled under her breath as he glanced over in her direction and got a dreamy look on his face.   
  
"Stupid curse." She muttered and tried to calm her mind. Being revealed like that in front of the kids had shaken her a little bit.   
  
"Hello there Red, I'm Johnny Storm and I'm burning up for you."   
  
She slowly opened her eyes to find that he was holding a flaming rose a few inches from her face and had this smirk on his face that actually reminded her of Kuno and what's his name, Piccole or something, the food guy. "Go away before I break your arm."  
  
"Now that isn't anyway to talk to your biggest fan." Johnny said happily, completely ignoring her threat. Several nearby girls developed some respectable auras as they glared at Ranma.  
  
"Go away." She muttered and waved her hand towards the street. "In that direction."  
  
Johnny, let the flames consume his whole body and lifted up off the ground. "I know, I know, you want my autograph don't you…"   
  
Ranma snarled as she sprang off the bench and punched him right in the nuts, retracted her flaming hand and patted out the flames. Johnny on the other hand slowly stopped burning, hung in the air for a few seconds holding 'little Johnny', and fell the ground writhing in pain. Ranma smirked evilly as she noticed the shocked silence around her. For some reason she was suddenly feeling a whole lot better, maybe that was why Akane tended to hit boys when she got mad at them.   
  
Behind her, Johnny led out a long groan as he finally managed to get his strength back and found himself held by about two dozen girls. He grinned weakly and wondered why the red head wasn't there as well. How could she not like someone like him, he was famous after all.  
  
**********  
  
Reptilian forms swarmed throughout the room, moving from a series of large computers to a pyramid shaped device in the center of the room. Machinery hummed with life and power, growing louder and louder with ever passing second. Snarks were big creatures, about twice the size of an alligator and ten times as mean.   
  
They were not patient creatures, but with the right motivation they could be quite innovative. At one point in time they had been some of the most dangerous creatures in the galaxy, but that title didn't apply anymore. Now they were a race in the midst of change.   
  
Striving to make their race even stronger than anything in the galaxy. Their first try to accomplish this goal had them stealing the powers from Power Pack and giving them to a Snark prince, but in the end that failed as the powers turned on him and destroyed his body.  
  
Ever since then the race had been looking for a way to stave their extinction by searching the universe for a way to achieve the power they needed to survive. Surprisingly there were many ways found, but all of them had major flaws that went against what they believed in.   
  
A small weak looking Snark was taking readings from a gauge on the side of the pyramid and looked at the Snark curled up inside. Energies swirled around inside, bathing the Snark with things that should never touch a living things. After taking down the latest reading, it walked back over to the large computer and tapped a couple of buttons.   
  
After several seconds the computer brought up the information and he grinned at the information. He reached into the white sash he was wearing and pulled out a small disk. "It's about time." He muttered to himself and walked back over to the machine.  
  
He motioned to an elaborately dressed Snark up on the second level and held up the disk. Seconds later the disk was slotted into place the pyramid started to glow as energy rained down on it from a crystal set into the ceiling.   
  
"Colvar?"  
  
"We are almost there Prince Lokar."  
  
"Lord Jackal isn't aware we are even here Colvar, if this fails we will be killed before we even have time to leave the planet."  
  
"Yes sir, but the machine is working perfectly and as you just saw the second phase is about to begin."  
  
"And Veil?"  
  
"He is still asleep and the computer is monitoring the changes in his cellular structure at all times. It's working perfectly."  
  
"Is there any deviation in the schedule?"  
  
"Yes, it seems to be accelerating faster than expected, but that was how the first subject reacted as well." Colvar said. "I think Veil will be ready to leave the womb chamber within twenty four hours."  
  
"Good, we must destroy those hatchlings. Revenge is all we have left." Lord Lokar snarled.   
  
Colvar heard an alarm beeping over on the control panel and went over to take a look. "Hmm…"  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"A power surge of some kind, it's actually helpful to the process and could speed things up a little."  
  
"Good." Lord Lokar said and stalked out of the room with a pair of guards on either side of him.   
  
The surge worried Colvar a little, but he tapped a couple of buttons and the alarm turned off. He had his orders to carry out and that fool Lokar wasn't about to get in his way. Suddenly the hum of machinery picked up all around them, startling all the Snarks in the room. Colvar raised his hand and got their attention.   
  
"We are beginning the final phase of the project!"  
  
The Snarks all scrambled to get into position and Colvar just grinned at them, knowing that the fools would not be able to stop him now that the final phase had started. The first attack on the hatchlings scum was a test to see how much they changed over the last few years.   
  
Then the second attack deliberately brought all of them into battle to see what they could accomplish. They were still studying the data gathered during the operation. The fifth opponent showed some interesting abilities that these humans didn't normally exhibit.  
  
Surprisingly Lord Lokar didn't seem interested in the boy, but Colvar had taken a look at the readings and recognized the readings almost instantly. They bore a striking resemblance to an enemy of his people, Silver Surfer and Fire Lord. The only difference was that the boy didn't seem to be using his abilities all that much during the fight.   
  
Colvar wasn't sure why either. If those readings were correct then the boy was gifted with a Power Cosmic. Something so rare that less than a dozen people in the universe could say the same thing. Whatever the answer was he would have to study it more before he carried out his final orders for the Great Skrull Empire.   
  
**********  
  
"You are perfect." A voice whispered.  
  
Though his body remained asleep, the being known as Veil was no longer alone within his body. A purple cloud of something filled his mind and with every passing second he could feel himself dying little by little. At the same time he could feel his power growing beyond his understanding.  
  
"What you once were I now become and I will get my revenge on that bastard that killed my last host."   
  
"…" Veil started.  
  
"You belong to me."   
  
And Veil was no more.  
  
**********  
  
Male again, Ranma stood on the roof of the building and watched the traffic drive by below him. Even after all this time he was still amazed at the amount of traffic in this city. No matter where he went he there was always a car or two around.   
  
A little while ago he started to sense something growing in the distance, so he'd jumped to this roof to look around. He wasn't sure what it was, but he could tell that there was a powerful being around. The energy he sensed was too big to be anything else.  
  
It worried him even more because there was something familiar about it, but he couldn't place remember from where. Even back in Nerima he'd been able to sense when one of his attackers was in the area if he was looking for it. His new senses made reading auras incredibly simple. There were mutants everywhere, hiding in apartments, in houses, down in the sewers, and riding the subways.  
  
For some reason they were starting to really stand out to him now, giving them a glow that a normal human didn't quite have. Now that the sun was up he could tell that a lot of them had gone back into hiding though, as if they feared being up and about during the day light. Except for that energy source growing in the distance anyway. Instead of hiding it was actually growing a little bit every few minutes.  
  
"Well, well, what do we have here?"  
  
Ranma turned around and found that a couple of guys holding bats had somehow managed to sneak up behind him, he scowled at them. He'd been so focused on sending his senses out to look at everything that he hadn't sensed them. He cursed his stupidity and took a closer look at the men.  
  
"What do you want?"  
  
"You freaks are always using the rooftops for your patrols around the city. We don't want your kind here."   
  
"I'm tired of hearing you run across my ceiling nine and ten times a night, picking fights, and causing problems." The other one said.  
  
For just a second, Ranma wondered what it was about this city that turned regular men into morons. The X Men barely gave any lip service to talking things out before they just started fighting everyone. The cops were trigger happy, and the super villains were actually better prepared than the regular criminals. Then there were people like this that went out of their way to pick a fight with people they didn't even know.  
  
"I'm not in the mood for a fight." He said.  
  
"We don't care; you freaks need to be taught a lesson." The first guy said. Ranma didn't even feel like giving them names.  
  
Ranma sighed, shrugged, and casually vaulted over the side of the building and landed on a streetlight a few yards away and waved at the two men as they gaped at him. There was something in the city that seemed to make everyone more confrontational than the people needed to be. Normally he wouldn't have minded fighting them, but he needed to find out why that energy was so familiar.  
  
"Later twerps, I got better things to do than beat you up." Ranma said as he started hopping from light to light. He ignored the cries and profanity the two men hurled after him and within a few minutes he was a couple miles away and getting closer to the energy source.   
  
Eventually he landed at the edge of a large empty lot almost the size of a full city block. Spaced here and there were the remains of several large piles of abandoned junk. He spotted a pile of wrecked cars, old tubs, several washing machines, and even a mangled motorcycle half buried in the grass. Now that he was closer to the energy source he could tell that he might have encountered it before, but something about it that was completely different as well.   
  
He wandered around the area for a few minutes trying to figure out what was going on when he found himself next to the large pile of cars. There were about twenty cars in various states of destruction piled several layers above him. The thing towered over him now that he was taking a closer look at it. Then he sensed something else and spun around to see The Torch land several yards away.  
  
"Who the hell are you?" Johnny asked and formed a couple balls of fire in his hands.   
  
"You." Ranma hissed as his anger flared again. "Go away…"  
  
"You must be the one that Reed wanted me to check out. Surrender or I'll have to take you down hard."   
  
Ranma almost laughed in the guy's face. A few months before he might have been intimidated by the appearance of a flaming man, but these days he had other things to worry about. "Typical mutant, jump to conclusions and damn the consequences, right?"  
  
Torch didn't even think as he sent a wave of fire towards Ranma. "You will pay for that! I'm not a mutant!"  
  
"Yeah right!" Ranma growled.  
  
Flipping out of the way was child's play for Ranma; he had other things on his mind. Like wondering where the heck that little speech had come from. He didn't care about mutants one way or another, so why the hell had he said something like that and why was this hot headed idiot attack him? "Gotta do better than that!"  
  
"It's time for you to go DOWN!" Johnny yelled as he flew into the air and fired a massive burst of fire towards Ranma. Instead of staying in one place Ranma dodged again, but this time he was standing right at the rear of the pile of cars and Torch's fire slammed into it. Normally this would have just blown up the back half of the pile or melted a hole right through it, but something else happened, something quite unexpected.   
  
The whole pile suddenly shimmered and a massive alien sized space ship suddenly took the place of the pile of broken cars. Before either of them could fully understand what they were looking at, a hatch in the back opened up and a bolt of red energy flew from the opening, and slammed right into Torch's chest. Ranma recognized the energy bolt instantly and he wasn't very surprised to see the hatch open up completely to form a ramp down to the ground a small squad of Snarks ambling out.   
  
Just out of the corner of his eye, Ranma could make out the stunned form of the flaming man and noticed for the first time that it was the guy that made a pass at him earlier. He wasn't thrilled to see the guy, but had to get the idiot out of the area before these things shot the two of them. He ran over to the guy before the Snark things could get a clean shot at him, dodged several energy bolts, and jumped the two of them to safety behind an over turned car. He could still sense the energy in the air too and now that the hatch was open Ranma could tell that the energy source was inside the ship.   
  
"What a day." He muttered as he sat the guy on the ground and peaked around the bumper of the car. There were twenty Snarks at the base of the ship now and they didn't look to pleased. Three of them were heading in his direction and spreading out to each side of the car to trap him.   
  
Johnny groaned and grabbed his head. "Did Ben tap me with his pinkie again?"  
  
"One of those things shot you with a blaster." Ranma said as Johnny sat up.  
  
Still a little groggy, Torch was about to attack again, just as the car they were hiding behind was blasted by laser fire. Ranma cursed and rolled out of the way, throwing a rock in mid roll and hitting the closest Snark in the head. It went down with a roar, sending laser fire into the sky. Torch reacted like a superhero usually does; he flew into the air, made himself a target, and blasted the ground in an arc that caught the other two Snarks off guard.   
  
Then he launched himself into the sky and used his fire to create a giant number four. Ranma glared up at the guy and wondered what the hell he was doing wasting his time like that, they didn't have time to make flame art in the middle of a battle. Ignoring the moron, his aura flared up and he threw his hands forward.   
  
"Möko Takabisha Revised – Continuous Beam!" Ranma yelled and sent a wave of energy slamming into the Snarks at the back of the ship, ignoring their laser fire as it missed him by inches, and kept it up until the last one fell to the ground smoking and unconscious. He let the energy go and was only a little surprised to find that he wasn't even tired after a blast like that.   
  
"Good Work." Torch said as he landed nearby. "I think that's the last of them…"   
  
"There's more inside, I can feel them." Ranma said.   
  
"You can feel them?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"How the hell do you do that?"  
  
"The same way you control fire, I just do it." Ranma snapped. This guy was really beginning to irritate him, the perverted womanizer. It was bad enough the guy pulled a 'Kuno' on him, now he had to put up with him following him around as well.   
  
Suddenly a loud squeaking sound caught their attention and Ranma glanced at the ship just as a very large Snark ambled down to the ground. Ranma took a step back as he realized the energy he'd been feeling was coming right at him. Torch flew into the air and started throwing fire balls at the thing before Ranma could react.   
  
"What the hell are these things?!" Torch yelled.   
  
The Snark stood close to ten feet tall, and was covered in muscle, wearing a weird looking black and red armor that made him look dangerous enough to cause problems. Surprisingly enough the thing wasn't carrying any kind of weapons as far as Ranma could tell, but that didn't matter much when the gator guy was starting to remind him of Cyclops's energy levels.   
  
"That's a Snark, but I've never seen one that big before."   
  
Torch gaped at the thing and he recalled a vague memory from a few years back with similar creatures. "I've seen these things somewhere before, but I don't recall anything else."  
  
"Who cares?!" Ranma snapped and formed a large ball of energy in his hands. "Blast the hell out of it and ask questions later! It's what all you superheroes do isn't it?"  
  
Torch just shrugged.  
  
Soulfire looked out of Veil's eyes and down at the creature that had killed his last host and sneered. "You will never have the power to destroy me mortal."  
  
Ranma didn't stop to think about the fact that the monster had spoken English; instead he finished charging his Ki attack and fired. An intense beam of blue energy launched from his hands, the wave of released energy nearly blew Torch off his feet. Soulfire let the beam hit him and just smiled a reptilian grin as he glared down at his enemy.   
  
"That won't work anymore you pathetic animal."   
  
Grunting and gasping for air, Ranma glanced at the blisters forming on his hands and for the first time realized that he could quite possibly kill him self if he used too much of his power. He could already feel the damage he'd done to other areas of his body as the wave of energy had swept through his nervous system. Then the thing raised his scale covered arm into the air and a sphere of bright blue energy swirled into existence.   
  
"You killed me once; you will never have the opportunity to do it again!" Soulfire screamed and a cascade of power dropped out of the palm of his hand towards Ranma.   
  
Ranma's widened as he realized the energy he was sensing was nearly identical to the aura that old bum he'd accidentally killed. "YOU!"   
  
Confused, Torch didn't think about what they were yelling at each other. Instead he fired his own wave of fire at the monster and launched into the air just as Soulfire's energy slammed into the ground where Ranma was standing and sent the him flying back.   
  
Flipping away from the destruction around him, Ranma did his best to get control of the fight back in his favor. He growled and flared his aura so that he could block some of the flying debris before it hit him. His hands lashed out and started to grab rocks as they flew by. In an instant, they were hurled towards the monster just as it started to walk forward.   
  
They bounced off its head and body, but unlike the other Snarks this one didn't seem to have the glass jaw. He saw some movement out of the corner of his eye as Torch swooped down and laid into the Snark. Soulfire's eyes flared with an internal fire for a split second and Torch's fire formed into a protective sphere. Then the monster waved his hand the ball of fire launched out and slammed into Johnny, sending him flying back.   
  
"JOHNNY!"   
  
Ranma heard the voice, but he ignored it as he jumped into the air, brought his hands around and gritted his teeth in pain as he fired a blast of energy into the ground at Soulfire's feet. The first blast had done a number on his hands, but not enough to slow him down. He was the best after all. Adapting techniques was a specialty of the Saotome School of Martial Arts, so instead of being the main attack, it was a feint.   
  
Caught off guard by the ground exploding at his feet, Soulfire stumbled back, right into Ranma's foot. Unlike a normal kick, Ranma's foot was glowing as it hit. The resulting explosion sent Ranma flying back and made Soulfire's head slam into the hull of the ship with a loud thud. Ranma flipped, landed on his feet, and slid back for several feet before he stopped.   
  
He glanced down at his pants and saw that he'd managed to damage them a little, but the dazed look in Soulfire's eyes told him all he needed to know. The thing wouldn't be standing for to long and with any luck, he would get that thing out of the alien's body. Then all he had to do was find to get rid of him forever.   
  
"Let's finish this." He mumbled as he moved go in and finish the job, but a shadow passing over him made him look up to see a big orange rock like thing hopping over his head. Then it landed with a heavy thud that smashed the ground at his feet and punched Soulfire as he yelled. "IT'S CLOBBERING TIME!"  
  
Suddenly Ranma realized that there were several powerful mutant auras in the area and he glanced around and got a good look at a blonde haired woman holding the Flaming Pervert. Standing over them was an older guy that looked like he was something out of a cartoon, stretched out in weird shapes, longer than normal arms, and looking right towards him. The guy said something and the woman glanced over at him as well.  
  
A loud shout caught Ranma's attention and he turned back towards Soulfire and the weird looking rock monster just as it clutched its head and stumbled back. It tripped and Soulfire towered of him and formed a ball of blue fire and a feral grin.   
  
"Damn it, I got distracted and that guy is about to get his ass kicked." Ranma muttered as he flared his aura again and blue light started to leak out of the corner of his eyes. "This guy has got to be stopped."  
  
"Be careful, Blue Fire Man."  
  
Ranma glanced down and spotted the little boy he'd met the day before, but this time he could see completely through the kid. "Huh, what happened to you?"  
  
"This is my ghost form."  
  
"Freaky, but cool…"  
  
"That thing wants you to attack it, the more energy you throw at it the stronger it will get."  
  
"How do you know that?"  
  
"My dream told me." Franklin said. "Be careful what you throw at him, the others are on their way to help…"   
  
"Who is?"  
  
Franklin looked startled, glanced away, and vanished from sight before Ranma could do anything. He shook his head and noticed that the thing was trying to get up, but something Soulfire was doing seemed to be messing up the monster's ability to stand up. Ranma knew that was a little slow on the uptake at times, but it suddenly dawned on him what the thing was doing and how it was done.   
  
It was absorbing their energy and redirecting it, or in this case, mixing his blue energy blast with the Flaming Pervert's fire blast to create blue fire. That in turn was being used in some way to affect the rock monster. Ranma relaxed just enough to let his aura vanish and wondered what he needed to do. He narrowed his eyes and took a closer look a the thing's aura and ruled out using the HSH on the green skinned body snatcher.   
  
"Blast it…" Ranma muttered.  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
Ranma eeped and slowly glanced to the side where he noticed the head of the cartoon guy, and then the neck receding back about twenty feet to the guy's body as it formed itself into a bed for the flame guy. "Um…yes?"  
  
"What are they doing here?" Reed Richards nose stretched out and pointed at the Snark ship.   
  
"They are after these kids I met this morning." Ranma said, lying a little just in case this guy wasn't trust worthy.  
  
"Kids?" Where are they now?"  
  
Ranma shrugged. "They were on their way to school a little while ago, I haven't seen them since, but they held their own against the little Snarks over there in the fight we had this morning."  
  
"Those things are trouble, what do you know about that big one?"  
  
"Not much, just that it possesses bodies." Ranma explained, feeling it wouldn't be a good idea to tell this guy that he'd killed that bum.  
  
"A body snatcher, we've fought those before, but something about that thing is familiar."  
  
"Have you met him before?"  
  
"No, but the way it's fighting is familiar."  
  
Glancing back at the rock thing, Ranma saw that the woman had entered the fight and was tossing the thing around without even touching it. "Whoa! How the heck is she doing that?"  
  
"Invisible force field." Reed said as he tried to think of a plan. At first he'd thought the boy was responsible for Johnny's state, but it appeared that he wasn't after all. Instead, it was that Z'xrz creature after all.   
  
"Oh, we need to make sure we don't throw anything at it." Ranma said.   
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"Me and the flame guy over there both blasted it, but it somehow learned to use our abilities after that." Ranma said as Soulfire burst into flame and blasted the ground around him trying to find the invisible woman. "Hey, where'd the girl go?"  
  
Reed ignored Ranma as he studied the Snark and frowned a little. "I think I know what we are dealing with, but I need to see inside that ship to confirm it. Help to keep him occupied while I check this out."  
  
"How?"  
  
"Hit him with something blunt, just don't throw it." Reed said as his body morphed, sat Johnny on the ground, stretched across the battlefield, and into the back end of the ship.   
  
Ranma ducked as Soulfire was thrown into the air over his head, only to land several yards away and roll to a stop. It quickly climbed to its feet and glared at the blonde haired woman standing in front of the rock monster. For a second Ranma was reminded of the one time he'd seen Kasumi pissed off at one of his attackers, for almost breaking her mother's picture.  
  
It wasn't exactly the same, but close enough for Ranma to decide that he didn't want to get on the lady's bad side. He yelled and shot forward at full speed and slammed Soulfire's head into the ground, caving the dirt in with the force of the blow.   
  
"You are dead." Soulfire growled as Ranma released him and backed off.  
  
"I don't think so."  
  
Blue fire flared around the lizard's massive body, pumping up his size and making his eyes glow with evil. "DEAD!"   
  
The world suddenly lurched and Ranma stumbled back as his sense of balance vanished in a typhoon of sensations. He fell down and grabbed his head as things started to crawl all over his body, in his hair, within his clothes, and under his skin. It felt Orange with a bit of sand.  
  
"This body is designed to fight those brats, but they seem to be working on you just fine boy. I will consume you like I did all those other bits of meat…"  
  
Ranma could barely tell what was happening to him as the energy washed over him. He knew that it had only been a couple of seconds, but it felt more like a couple of hours already, then ten minutes, then a couple of weeks. Then it stopped and he shuddered as the world swirled into focus and noticed that the blonde woman was standing above him.   
  
"Are you alright?"  
  
"I'll…live." Ranma muttered. "What happened?"  
  
"That thing seems to be able to mess with our senses; Ben is distracting him right now.   
  
Ranma nearly threw up as he forced himself to his feet and quickly pressed his thumb under his rib cage and twisted up. It was a pressure point that stopped him from tossing his lunch up. He didn't have time to be sick. Staggering back a couple of seconds he heard something odd and glanced over at the fight just as Soulfire exploded into fire and sent it right into the rock guy's stomach.  
  
"BEN!" Susan yelled.   
  
Then, with almost surreal silence Ranma watched as a large blue trash can covered in graffiti dropped out of the sky onto Soulfire. The sound it made was indescribable, but the fire instantly went out and the Thing shook stumbled out of the fire and looked around.   
  
They glanced up to see a cloudy haze hovering above the battlefield, then the center of it flared with light and a rain of little fire balls slammed into the trash can. Within seconds it was reduced to bit of metal and they could see Soulfire being pummelled.   
  
"What's going on?" Susan asked.  
  
"It's the kids." Ranma grunted and tried to deal with this situation. "And they just made a mistake."  
  
The Thing took advantage of the distraction and ran forward, attacking Soulfire with a backhand blow. Instead of flying back, the Snark's head barely moved as it grinned and fire flew from its eyes and sent The Thing flying off his feet. This was enough to make the bombardment stop, but Ranma could still feel Soulfire's energy growing.   
  
That little lull in the battle was all The Thing needed as he dove back into the fight by punching Soulfire. This time he didn't hold back as much and sent the thing stumbling back. He pressed his attack by raining blow after blow down around the reptile's head.   
  
"Ah sh…"  
  
"Ranma what is going on?"  
  
They looked down to see Starstreak in her purple costume looking at Soulfire fearfully. "These things are usually pretty easy to beat…"  
  
"This one has powers." Ranma said.  
  
"Its way to dangerous for children to fight." Susan snapped. "Go home!"  
  
Starstreak ignored Franklin's mother as she focused on Ranma. "How do we beat it?"  
  
"It absorbs energy I think, we have to beat it up until it fall over." Ranma explained as Counter Weight, Destroyer, and Mass Master landed around him and glanced over at Susan Richards.  
  
"You're all children?!"  
  
"We're Power Pack!" Counter Weight said dramatically.  
  
"Children should not be in a place like this!" She yelled.   
  
"We've been fighting these things for years and we will continue to do so." Counter Weight said. "We need to blast that thing, like we did to Jackal that one time."  
  
"You kids stay out of this, I'm not sure what you can do to help, but…"  
  
"We've fought a super powered Snark before." Destroyer said. "We can beat them, it just takes team work."  
  
Ranma stared down at the little girl and didn't know what to say. Personally, he knew what they could do and didn't have any problems with them fighting. It's what he would have done after all, but the blonde woman was getting over protective.  
  
Suddenly The Thing yelled and Ranma watched him fly overhead as Soulfire's energy blast sent him flying over head again. The energy quickly dissipated off Thing's body even as he landed. He slammed into the side of the space ship and went right through the wall.   
  
It nearly tipped the ship over on its side. Then dozens of armed Snarks ran down the back hatch and started to fire at them. Ranma could just see that the guy had landed on a couple of Snarks near a computer set up.  
  
Throwing her hand forward, Susan formed a wall in front of them and deflected the laser fire. "We need to get out of here!"   
  
"We have a job to do." Counter Weight yelled and turned. "POWER PACK GO!"  
  
"NO!" Susan yelled and Ranma made a grab for them.   
  
He didn't want them to get hurt either, but the situation was beginning to get out of hand. Then he was a bit surprised when they flew over to a smaller pile of cars and dropped Destroyer on top of them. As the youngest of the group she looked a little odd as she knelt down, placed her hands the hood of a car and the whole pile started to glow.   
  
Then she lit up like a little star and pile of cars vanished seconds later. Ranma had a feeling he knew where this was going and he decided to act before things got worse. His aura flared out rippling his clothing and sending a dust cloud flowing away from.   
  
It caught Soulfire's attention as it glanced from him to the kids. "You will not hurt them!"  
  
"Try and stop me."   
  
Ranma shot forward at full speed. He had an idea in mind, but he'd never had a chance to practice it, but with the lizard's body glowing, it set up the conditions he needed. As he wadded into the fight the lizard's body continued to pour out energy. Ranma dodged the thing's attacks and led it into the Hiryü Shöten Ha's spiral.   
  
For the first time in weeks he controlled the battle and it felt good to finally let loose with some of his most advanced techniques. Massive amounts of cold Ki flowed from his body, but he continued to move as fast as he could, dodging everything the Snark threw at him.   
  
He could hear the kids yelling at him to get out of the way, but he ignored them. He would have to be careful when he set off the attack, but that was for later, right now he just grinned as he felt the atmosphere round them change and electrify.   
  
"Hold still you hairless meat bag!" Soulfire yelled as it tried to tag him again, but Ranma wasn't paying attention.   
  
They reached the center of the spiral and Ranma came to a dead stop and threw a spinning uppercut into the monster's jaw.   
  
"Hiryü Shöten Ha!"  
  
Normally the Hiryü Shöten Ha created a tornado based off two different types of KI mixing together to form an imitation tornado. Until today he'd never used it with his new powers and as a the massive bolt of lighting dropped out of the sky and slammed into Soulfire, he realized that he might have gone a little overboard.  
  
The tornado that formed rumbled into life and rose into the sky with a clap of thunder that echoed over the city. Ranma watched at Soulfire's body lifted into the sky and HSH did what it was designed to do, drain and enemy of his energy and bleed it into the tornado.   
  
Then Soulfire's body flared with light as he tried to fight and the bodiless being was sucked out into the tornado with a shriek of fear. In seconds the tornado tripled in size and shot several thousand feet into the air, expanding out and growing so loud that Ranma could barely hear anything at all.   
  
The swirling air inside the twister was hard to see through, but he could see that the blonde haired woman had managed to get the kids under her force field and the thing was holding that to the ground with his body. The space ship was just out of range, but the force of the winds was ripping the outer layers of the ship's body off as it was made of paper.   
  
He'd never seen a Hiryü Shöten Ha this powerful before. His mind flashed and he realized that it would just get much worse before it died down, unless she did something. He closed his eyes and cleared his mind, lifted his hand into the air, and wondered if he was about to kill himself.   
  
Even back in his own world he'd never had time to learn this move, so he only knew the very basics, but he didn't have time to master it now. He would just have to do it and hope for the best. His senses lashed out and touched the tornado and he gave a mental yank, drawing the energy into his own body.   
  
And he screamed.   
  
**********  
  
"That really wasn't a very smart thing to do Ranma."  
  
"I did what I needed to do." Ranma snapped.   
  
"On the other hand it was rather brave of you, one of the many reasons I chose you to channel my essence."   
  
"Aho?"   
  
"I really didn't plan on taking to you until you'd grown up enough to understand what was done to you. Your immaturity runs deeper than you can comprehend, but at heart you are a hero and that shines through."  
  
"Where am I? I can't see anything."   
  
"You are currently unconscious; I'm using our link to cross the bridge and talk to you."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"You charged that tornado with energy, and then made it worse by powering the tornado with Soulfire's body, a living energy being that can possess any mutant."  
  
"So, he's gone now."  
  
"Energy can not be destroyed Ranma, just altered into something else. You absorbed Soulfire's energy into your body to stop the tornado and save everyone's life."  
  
"Oh sh…"  
  
"Indeed, and other applicable curse words added into the mix."  
  
"So what's going to happen?"  
  
"I'm holding him prisoner so that he can not harm you, but I won't do so forever Ranma."  
  
"Explain what the hell you are talking about!"  
  
"This is your life Ranma, your destiny, so Soulfire is your problem to deal with. You have the power at your fingertips to annihilate Soulfire and kill him forever, but you don't know how to use that power yet. You use it like a sledgehammer to kill a fly; you have no fineness at all. Therefore, I'm going to use him to train you in a sense. One day I will release Soulfire and you will have a chance to beat him completely, but if you lose he will most likely kill you."  
  
"You asshole."  
  
"I am Aho." The voice said with a hint of amusement. "Think of this as the next level of your training Ranma, just like what Cologne did when she trained Ryoga to beat you in a fight."  
  
"But…"  
  
"Don't complain to me!"  
  
Ranma wanted to deck his tormentor now.  
  
"Get as angry as you want, I don't care about your wants or desires, I just want you to learn how to use the power I have given you. You need a path to walk, a purpose, so I'm giving you one since you haven't picked one out yourself."  
  
"How long do I have?"  
  
"Who cares, when I think you're ready I'll let him loose."  
  
"What about the others, did I manage to save them?"  
  
"Look for yourself." Aho said and Ranma found his eyes opening just a bright light flooded his eye.   
  
"Agh!" He growled and grabbed the wrist holding the light to pull it away.  
  
The light returned and Ranma managed to see that a guy wearing a lab coat was bending over him making a quick examination. "Hold still, I just need to finish this and I'll let you get back to sleep."  
  
Ranma looked around and noticed that he wasn't in a hospital, but in what looked like a lab of some kind. There were machines all around him and he didn't have a clue what any of them did. "What's going on?"  
  
"You nearly killed yourself when you pulled that stunt."  
  
"The what?" He asked in confusion.  
  
"The F3 tornado in the middle of downtown Manhattan, the news services are still talking about it three days later and have no clue how it formed on such a cloudless day."  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
"Reed Richards."  
  
He glanced over at the old guy and realized that it was the man he'd been trying to get in contact with.  
  
"You managed to save my whole team from that monster, single handedly, that was a very impressive feat considering I wasn't able to come up with an answer while I was checking out the ship."  
  
"No problem, was anyone hurt?"  
  
"The only casualties were the Snarks themselves and Shield took them into custody when the tornado died down. We've been looking after you ever since."  
  
Grabbing the blanket, Ranma started to get up, but Reed stretched out a finger and expanded it so that he could press him back down to the bed. "I'm afraid you can't leave just yet, Shield would like to have word with you about where you came from, how you pulled off that tornado, and who you are."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"You aren't registered anywhere and it's as if you don't really exist. Your wallet had plenty of money in it and a card with Professor Xavier's personal phone number on it and he explained things a little, but for now we need to keep you here."  
  
"I won't let you keep me prisoner." Ranma growled and tried to remove Reed's finger from his chest.  
  
"You aren't a prisoner, we just need to have some questions answered and then Shield will let you go."  
  
Suddenly the door to the lab opened with a loud bang and The Thing stalked into the room smoking one of his cigars. Following along behind him was a rather plain looking woman wearing a brown suit, glasses, and had her blonde hair up in a bun on top of her head. She was making notes on an a clip board as she walked and ignored what sounded like grumbling from The Thing. They made their way over to the bed and the woman glared down at Ranma with a hint of malice in her eyes.   
  
"Um…hello?" Ranma tried.  
  
"You aren't real."  
  
"You don't say?"  
  
Her eyes turned flinty and Ranma wondered what it was about women that always made them so angry for no possible reason. The guy made out of rock, like something out of an anime Ranma vaguely recalled, tapped him a couple of times in the chest. "Don't you go insulting the lady, boy. You caused quite a mess out there and we need to figure out what is going on, you have the answers, so give up." Then he blew a cloud of smoke in Ranma's face.   
  
"Ben there's no need to be so rough…" Reed started.  
  
"He nearly killed several people with that stunt of his." The Thing growled.  
  
Ranma would be the first to admit that he'd changed recently, grown up a little because of some of the things that plagued his life, but sitting back and letting some arrogant jerk get away with insulting him was out of the question. His eyes lit up and sent a quick burst of energy right into Thing's eyes. The big lug stumbled back in shock and Ranma launched out of bed before anyone could move, bounced off the ceiling, grabbed Thing's head and shoulder, and used his momentum to yank him around and throw him across the room.   
  
With a flash of blue Ranma's aura flared to life and lit up the whole room. "You will never talk to me like that again! It was, because of idiots like you always telling me what I should and shouldn't do, that nearly got a…friend of mine killed. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!"  
  
"Calm down kid." Reed said as he formed himself into a wall between the two men to keep them from going at it right then and there.  
  
"Get out of my way Reed, the baby needs to be spanked." The Thing growled as he climbed back to his feet. "It's time to teach him a lesson."  
  
"You may be big, but I've taken arrogant asses like you down before." Ranma snapped back.  
  
The Thing grabbed the floor and ripped it up like a rug, tossing Reed into the air and out of the way, and then he threw a punch at Ranma. "Arrogant pup!"  
  
Ranma dodged the slow blow, grabbed his arm and swung himself into the air, and slammed his foot down on the back of Thing's neck. "I can hit stone hard enough to shatter it, monster. I've seen a friend that can reduce a wall ten times your size to rubble with his finger! There is no way a wimp like you can beat me!" Ranma yelled as Thing collapsed to the ground.   
  
Only to roll forward, grab Ranma by the shirt and throw him across the room almost negligently. "Didn't feel a thing, ya'pansy."  
  
Reed finally managed to reform himself, and shook his head as he saw the barely noticeable grin on Thing's face as fought the kid. He stretched his head over to Miss. Cutter the representative from Shield. "Miss Cutter, it might take me a while to get them to stop."  
  
"That boy isn't registered anywhere in the world Mr. Richards, we need to find out who he is."  
  
"According to a friend of mine he's from a different dimension."  
  
She glowered at him. "You don't expect me to believe that do you?"  
  
"It's the truth and if my earlier readings are correct, that kid's power level is off the scale."  
  
"That makes getting his records even more vital. He might be of use to Shield if we need to use him."  
  
"That kid wouldn't let you use him, look how he's fighting Thing. I don't think he would back down from a fight even if he was on the verge of death. My friend, who first met him a few weeks ago, says the kid's martial arts training surpasses some of the best fighters in the world."  
  
CRASH!  
  
Reed turned to see Thing looking sheepish and a large body shaped hole where a window used to be. "Ooops."  
  
"You idiot!" Miss Cutter screamed and ran to the window to see a blue comet arching out over the buildings. Then almost lazily it seemed to land on top of a nearby building across the street and land with quite an acrobatics display before coming to a stop.   
  
Ranma glared up at the top floors of Four Freedom's plaza. For a second he actually considered firing a Ki blast through the window he'd just flown through, but then that woman was there looking out, looking down at him. He waved hat her. Then he gave Thing the finger, turned, and made a running jump for the next building. Most of the buildings had a similar size and height so he was able to make a break for it.   
  
Obviously Reed Richards was a bust, he would have to try one of the other names on the list if he wanted to get home, but first he had several things he needed to do. Aho hadn't been kidding when he told him to learn how to use his new abilities. They were an extension of his strength now, it would mean a ton of practice. Something he had to admit he hadn't gotten much of lately. So he would have to rectify that.   
  
As he ran his mind wandered through his last three fights and focused on that little blonde girl. He'd met her three times as well and he recalled the way her aura felt to his senses. It was the perfect way to track her and those others down, he needed to see if they were alright. At first he couldn't really find what he wanted, instead he spotted about a dozen more mutants running around acting like normal people, but a few minutes later he blocked them out and focused on what he wanted.   
  
It was as if he could 'see' a beacon in the distance. He altered his course while still using the roof tops and made his way deeper into Manhattan until he reached an apartment building. He landed and let his aura die down and vanish as he looked around and realized he recognized the area from the day before when he dropped those two kids off with that woman.   
  
He could sense the girl's aura several floors below him. Shrugging, he climbed over the side of the building and started scaling down the side of the building. Moving up and down walls was a skill he hadn't used in a while and bricks gave him some great hand holds. He didn't really care if anyone saw him, it wasn't like he was going to jump or anything and he wasn't to worried about falling.   
  
He came to a window, glanced inside, and saw the kids from earlier sitting on the floor talking with each other. He knocked on the window, grinned, and waved at them when they gave him a shocked look. The little blonde one ran over and opened the window for him so he could get inside.   
  
"I didn't know you could fly!" She almost yelled, but the older girl managed to cover the girl's mouth before she got to loud.  
  
"I can't."   
  
"Ranma?" Alex asked as he stood up. "Why are you here?"  
  
"I wanted to see if you kids were alright. The fight with that thing got out of hand." Ranma said as he knelt down on the floor. "Was anyone hurt?"  
  
"No…"  
  
"That tornado was so COOL!" Jack said. "I've never seen anything like it before, swirling air full of lighting strong enough to drop that super Snark in its tracks."  
  
"It's a move I learned some time ago, it has lots of uses against powerful fighters."  
  
"I can bet, that tornado destroyed the lot and tossed several feet of top soil into the atmosphere before it stopped moving around." Julie said as Katie got away and glowered at her.  
  
"Once we were sure no one was hurt we got out of there before anyone could catch us." Katie said. "A few minutes later the police showed up to see what the heck was going on. They were quite surprised to find that space ship and all those Snarks just lying around."  
  
"We heard Shield took over the case." Alex explained. "Where were you after the fight anyway?"  
  
"That Reed Richards guy took me back to his place I guess. I just left a little while ago."  
  
"He's a good guy. He and my dad discuss things every now and then."  
  
Ranma shrugged and stood up. "So long as all of you are alright I guess I better get on my way."  
  
"Where are you going?" Katie asked.  
  
"I'm not sure yet, I have to do a bit of training and find a way to get home. I figure the open country would be a good place to start, it'll give me time to think."  
  
"Head west if you want to get out of the city, though it may take some time if you are on foot like yesterday." Alex explained. "You can buy some maps at the store down the street."  
  
Ranma nodded and headed for the window. "Thanks kid, perhaps we can meet again sometime."  
  
"Our parents aren't home at the moment, you can use the front door if you like." Jack said as he looked away.   
  
Several minutes later Ranma was back at street level and waved goodbye to the kids, he wasn't sure where he needed to be, but west was as good an answer as any other direction. He'd lost his pack somewhere along the way and he would need to buy some stuff. There was a good chance that Richards or Shield would have it, but getting it back would be hard if he just asked them to give it back.   
  
He grinned and decided that using the Umisenken to get his stuff back would be a lot of fun and there was no way they would expect him to come back less than an hour after he left.  
  
**********  
  
The End of Story Two  
  
There ends the second story in the Prime Attitude story line, let me know what you think. This is a bit shorter than the first one, but I figured a short adventure would be a lot of fun to write. Yes that is a cliffhanger, and a very tiny possibility of a PA 3 with Spiderman, but I'm not sure if I'm up for writing it at the moment.   
  
If anyone had any ideas I'd love to hear them.  
  
The Kasumi thing, of course I made it up, but I figured it would be a good way to toss in some info on the Nerima crew for the story. Its got to have some differences after all.   
  
Sue has always been a bit over protective in the books I've read, so I tried to portray that. Reed has a tendency to let the others fight while he fiddles with the science things. The Thing…well he's the Thing.  
  
And what in the hell happened to Franklin…  
  
**********  
  
Omake:  
  
By Gordon Stevenson  
  
Ranma meets Stan Lee  
  
Male again, Ranma stood on the roof of the building and watched the traffic drive by below him. Even after all this time he was still amazed at the amount of traffic in this city. No matter where he went he there was always a car or two around.   
  
A little while ago he started to sense something growing in the distance, so he'd jumped to this roof to look around. He wasn't sure what it was, but he could tell that there was a powerful being around. The energy he sensed was to big to be anything else.  
  
It worried him even more because there was something familiar about it, but he couldn't place remember from where. Even back in Nerima he'd been able to sense when one of his attackers was in the area if he was looking for it. His new senses made things like incredibly simple. There were mutants everywhere, hiding in apartments, in houses, down in the sewers, and riding the subways.  
  
For some reason they were starting to really stand out to him now, giving them a glow that a normal human didn't quite have. Now that the sun was up he could tell that a lot of them had gone back into hiding. Except for that energy source growing in the distance. Instead of hiding it was actually growing a little bit every few minutes.  
  
Suddenly Ranma heard a voice that seemed to resonate everywhere, including the inside of his head but it seemed loudest behind him.  
  
"As stood on the rooftop, the Mighty Martial Artist Ranma Saotome pondered his fate as he gazed out over the New York skyline!"  
  
"What the #@$%?"  
  
Ranma spun around dropping into a defensive stance and found that an Old man had somehow come up behind him without Ranma sensing him or his aura at all, which was unusual. Ranma could usually sense the aura of almost anyone but when he tried to with the old man he got nothing?!  
  
"Greetings True Believer!"  
  
The old man stood there smiling at Ranma and from what little Ranma could sense he didn't detect any malice from the old man rather a sense of happiness and mischievousness that seemed to radiate from him.  
  
The Old man stood a little over five feet tall and black hair on the top of his head and white hair surrounding the rest of his skull. The old man had a moustache of white something like Soun Tendo's but not as luxuriant. The old man had an amused twinkle in his eyes and he wore a large pair of glasses over them to help him see.  
  
As Ranma studied the old man (and he presumably studied Ranma back), Ranma felt as if he head seen this old man somewhere before, he just couldn't remember where. The memory was niggling at the edge of Ranma's mind trying to get him to remember where he had seen this old guy before.  
  
And then he had it! The fight with that mutant Soul Fire! The old man had been in the crowd of people watching the fight!! He was in the back of the crowd and was moving people out of the way from Soul Fire's attacks and helping them to reach safety.   
  
Ranma remembered briefly seeing the old man helping people out and was glad that someone had some sense to help get other out of harm's way and then his attention was claimed by Soul Fire as their fight continued on till Ranma had beaten (and ultimately killed) Soul Fire.  
  
Who the Hell was this old man? How the Hell did he find me? How the Hell did he manage to sneak up on me undetected? How does he know whom I am? And What the Hell was with that speech?  
  
Suddenly Ranma heard the voice again that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere and the weird thing was the old man's lips weren't moving.  
  
"Surprised the Mighty Martial Artist Ranma Saotome intently studied his visitor trying to determine if he was friend or foe! His powerful muscles were tensed and he was ready to leap into action at a moments notice!"  
  
"What the Hell?" Ranma wondered. "Okay! That's it I've had enough of this!"  
  
"Who the Hell are you Old man and how do you know who I am? And what is up with that voice?"  
  
"Why I'm Stan Lee! And for how I know who you are why that's easy I'm the creator of the Marvel Universe!   
  
Ranma goggled at the old man. "The What?"  
  
"The Marvel Universe". The old man replied simply. "The place where you are right now". "And as for the voice that was just me doing some narrating".  
  
"Hunh? Narrating? Have you gone senile or something old man? And that still doesn't tell me how you knew who I was"  
  
"Senile? Not at all." Stan replied. "As for the rest let me explain and how I Know about you let me explain".  
  
"You see, you were originally in your home universe right?"   
  
Ranma nodded.  
  
"Well the place your in now is called the Marvel Universe". "It's populated by characters from Marvel comics books…What you'd call Manga … Here there called comic books and the name of the company that owns the rights and privileges to the characters is called Marvel Comics. So they wound up calling it the Marvel Universe".  
  
"Comics? Manga? Oh great another crazy old geezer for me to deal with". Ranma thought.  
  
"I was the one that created a lot of the characters…people… in the Marvel universe so I'm recognized as the creator of the Marvel Universe".  
  
"Then you're some kind of Kami then?" Ranma asked unbelievingly." There is no way in hell this old man is a Kami…I hope, though that would explain why I couldn't sense the Old coot's aura, he's probably masking it from me. He thought.  
  
"In a sense yes I am. Stan replied. "I created or helped create most of the Heroes and Villains of the Marvel Universe". "So I guess I am the Kami of the Marvel Universe as you'd call it". Stan replied with a smile.  
  
Ranma stared at the old man in shock. "Oh shit! My luck with Kami has been all bad, if my life is any indication!" He thought.  
  
Noticing the shocked look on Ranma face Stan thought he'd better continue his story.  
  
"I eventually retired from Marvel comics. However in appreciation for starting the whole Marvel Universe rolling and as part of my retirement package deal, I get to guest star in any production of the characters of the Marvel Universe".  
  
"I've been an extra in several Movies, Daredevil, Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk and I've done the voice over or narrating of several cartoons based of Marvel characters. Anytime a marvel character is used I'm there as a thank you for creating the Marvel universe."  
  
"And as for how I know all about you I'm always interested in comic book characters done by others so I read all the comics...er...Manga about you."  
  
"You're telling me I'm a comic book character?!" Ranma screamed.   
  
"That's right True Believer! So when I heard that these two writers were doing a fan fiction with you in the Marvel Universe, I had my lawyers contact the writers and put pressure on them for not including me in the fic as my contract with Marvel Comics implicitly states. As a result of that pressure here I am narrating the continuing adventures of the Mighty Martial Artist Ranma Saotome!"   
  
"In answer to your other question, Narration is telling a story with an ongoing audio content. So while your in this fic, in the Marvel Universe, I'm here to tell your story to the reader in narrative style."  
  
Ranma wondered how it was that he encountered all the Crazy, Senile old Freaks! First, the Old Ghoul, then the Old Pervert Happosai, now this Crazy old coot. "Man what is it that attracts all the old Freaks to me? Is my Karma that screwed up? I've got to get away from this Senile old Freak quickly I can't take much more of this shit!"  
  
"Listen Old man I'd love to stay and here more but I gotta go and…uh…See someone about something…Yeah that's it! See you around old man!"  
  
Ranma turned from the old man and began Rooftop hopping away from the old man and top speed, hoping to loose the old man or at least put as much distance as he could between them.  
  
Leaping from roof to roof Ranma heard more of that "Narration" again.  
  
"As he leapt over the rooftops onwards to his destiny, the Mighty Martial Artist Ranma Saotome was unaware of his encounter with destiny, in the form of a slight imperfection in one of the roofs which would catch the toe of his right foot throwing him off balance causing him to stumble and fall off the roof."  
  
Ranma scoffed as he heard this bit of narration.   
  
"Trip and fall off a roof? Yeah right! I haven't fallen off a roof since I was 6 years old! Stupid, Crazy old fart! What was it about old people that caused them to become such   
  
a giant pain in the ass?! Ranma wondered.  
  
As Ranma pondered Senile old people he touched down on a roof and prepared to leap on to the next to continue his journey. As he began his leap his foot caught on an imperfection in the roof with his right foot. This threw off his balance and before he could regain his balance he stumbled and fell off the roof. Just as Stan Lee had just narrated.  
  
"#@$%*&% old man!! His stupid narration broke my concentration and caused me to slip and fall of the roof!" Ranma cursed.  
  
"Well at least I don't have to listen to that old freak any more." Ranma thought as he prepared to try and stop or slow his descent.  
  
As Ranma looked for something to grab on to he caught something out of the corner of his eye. There was Stan Lee dangling from the side of a building holding on to a rope…no…it looked like he was holding on to some gossamer thread or a hunk of a giant spider web.  
  
Just as Ranma took in the sight of Stan Lee dangling from the side of a building holding onto a giant spider web, Stan began narrating again.  
  
"Down, Down the hapless, helpless Martial Artist plunged helpless to stop his fall as there wasn't anything in reach to grab onto and slow his fall."  
  
Ranma cursed again sure enough things were as Stan just narrated. A window sill that Ranma was hoping to grab onto and slow his fall, was suddenly too far away for him to grab a hold of and there wasn't anything else for him to grab onto.  
  
"Senile old man is making things worse with his narration!" Ranma cursed.  
  
"Faster and Faster Ranma fell plunging downwards towards the street far below, picking up speed as he fell and desperately trying to find a way out of his horrible predicament." Stan Narrated.  
  
"Will you shut the Hell up old Man ?!?!!! Ranma screamed. You're making things worse with your stupid narration!!  
  
This was true as what was a short easily survivable fall became a head long plunge as Ranma fell several stories towards the concrete below.  
  
"Will the Mighty Martial Artist Ranma manage to survive dizzying fall towards the ground below or will he be too late to save himself?  
  
"SHUT UP YOU BASTARD!!! Ranma screamed.  
  
"Tune into the next chapter of Prime Attitude and see!"  
  
"What the hell now?" Ranma screamed as his fall towards the ground seemed to go on forever. Where he suddenly found himself fading into the background and Stan taking up position in the foreground and posed for the audience.  
  
"That's all for now True Believer! See you Next Time for another chapter of Prime Attitude! Excelsior!"  
  
"You &%$#@ I'll make you pay for this!" Ranma's voice echoed from some distance away. 


End file.
